Bob Seitz
September 13, 1999
This describes the week I spent
at the Vaughans' open house–one of, if not the, most fascinating
weeks of my life. The Vaughans graciously invited any and all members of
the Prometheus Society and subscribers to the Prometheus Society's journal,
"Gift of Fire", to spend a week at their house in Federal Way, Washington.
The conversation was addictive, covering topics from A to Z. I could imagine
such luminous conversations among the bright and the beautiful at London
salons in the early 1900's, in the presence of such celebrities as G. K.
Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Godfrey
Hardy. However, most of us don't ever have the experience of finding ourselves
in the midst of such constellations of intellectual firepower.
If you've never seen the Puget
Sound area in the Pacific Northwest, it's rolling forest country, with
dusky, cool-weather evergreens such as rhododendron; conifers, such as
hemlocks and firs; and deciduous trees. Flanked by the Pacific, it's cool
in the summer and warm in the winter. The rocks are igneous, with snow-capped
volcanoes along the skyline. Five Prometheans made it to the conclave:
Fred Vaughan, Bob Park and his wife, Eve, from Sydney, Fred Britton from
Vancouver (Canada), Kerry Williams from Alaska, and Ron Penner from Seattle.
Anticipating the week, I thought
"Who will come? What will these potential-geniuses be like? Will I be able
to keep up with the conversation? Are they as consummately brilliant as
one would expect of those in the 1:30,000 category and up? (The 1:30,000
level corresponds to childhood IQ's of 183 and up, with an average IQ of
190.) How well will they get along with each other? Would they be interested
in someone trying to help the prodigiously gifted?"
I arose at 4:15 a. m., Tuesday,
August 10th, and kissing Tommie good-bye, left for Nashville in the still
coolness of first light. I was uneasy about Nashville, since I'd be circumnavigating
it at 8:00 a. m., but it all went like a greased goose. When I reached
the airport, I found that I'd left my briefcase and all that was in it
at home in the garage, so on the plane, I wrote notes furiously on a Southwest
Airlines notepad all the way to Seattle-Tacoma. On the airplane, they fed
us "Fast Food", which included peanuts, raisins, crackers, and cheese,
and was pretty filling. When I deplaned at the SeaTac Airport, a man was
holding a sign with my name on it. I said to him, "Hi, Fred! Happy to meet
you!", whereupon he explained that he wasn't Fred. He was Bob Park. Fred
was waiting at the door in his Saturn
It took forever and a day for
my one little piece of luggage to arrive. We finally retrieved it and repaired
to Fred's car, where we headed for "home". Then we all ate on the patio:
the Parks, the Vaughans, and I. The Vaughans were perfect hosts, and their
house was the perfect house. Their house boasts six bedrooms, plus a computer
room. They're located in a wood in the middle of downtown Federal Way (a
Tacoma suburb), along with several other, widely spaced, houses on a private
road. The trees look like hemlocks, although they're probably not. The
Vaughans have rhododendron in their backyard rock garden, with a running
stream that, I suppose, is pumped and re-circulated. They also have bird
and squirrel feeders, a fact that hasn't been lost on the Federal Way bird
and squirrel populations. Downstairs, the Vaughans have a full-size living
room, a formal dining room, and a family room , along with two baths, two
bedrooms, and the computer room.
Upstairs, there are four bedrooms,
one bath, and two good-sized conversational areas, complete with chairs
and sofas. It was a perfect place to hold a conclave like this. It was
hard to leave a conversation long enough to visit the bathroom, although
I did manage that often enough. I laughed until my sides hurt.
Bob Park is a computer trouble-shooter
without a college degree. He's a few days away from the seasoned age of
58, and is semi-retired. Bob is probably 6'2" tall, slim, and a professional-class
squash player. He has an unruly mop of once-sandy white hair, and a large,
brachycephalic head. [I got the impression that he scored 42 on the Mega
test, missing one or two of the analogy problems because of cultural differences,
and is evidently most-adept in the mathematical/logical domain. He hadn't
known how smart he was until he took the Mega Test (although he knew that
everyone around seemed pretty "steupid").] Bob has now had a "grand-scheme-of-things-entire"
cosmological epiphany that is so startling that it has him a bit anxious.
He's planning to write it up, and eventually, to publish it in "Gift of
Fire". (I'm eager to see it.) As a child and an emerging adult, Eve had
a photographic mind, which has since evanesced (as eidetic memories typically
do). She's a very intelligent woman, perhaps more verbally than mathematically
inclined. Bob and Eve have two daughters, but so far, no grandchildren.
Fred Britton's life would make
a great story or novel. Fred is a walking encyclopedia. (Saying that, I
don't mean to imply that he's not also a mathematical virtuoso.) Fred got
a 39 on the Mega Test, and then came up with several more answers a few
days after he mailed his answer sheet (all of which supports the idea that
there aren't clear-cut differences between the Megans and the Prometheans).
Fred is also 58. He is bald, with a short-trimmed sandy beard. He's also
perhaps 6' 2", and on the slim side. He is the epitome of one type of college
professor, peering at you through his glasses. Fred is voluble and, of
course, very articulate, using his arms to express himself. He majored
in psychology, and finished two years toward a Ph. D., studying at one
point under Cattell. What lured Fred away from his Ph. D. in psych was
the siren song of the stock market.
Beyond that lay the Circean spell
of trying to beat the casinos at their own game. Fred and his partner were
able to make a living at it while seeing the world, but I believe they
feel that the cap isn't worth the game.
When you think of Kerry Williams,
think John Denver. Kerry is similar in appearance, voice, and manners.
I think of Kerry as the archetypical young Harvard faculty member. Kerry
had brought a patent application that he wanted Fred Vaughan and me to
witness, which we did.
Kerry would be a husky 6' with
a ponytail and brown or green eyes. He's 48, but you would NEVER know it.
He also lacks a college degree, and is a construction worker in Anchorage.
He works six months out of the year for pay, and spends the other six months
working on his own projects. He is highly creative, and is (among other
things, I'm sure) an inventor. Like the others who attended, he's very
likable. They've all learned to cope well with the mediocracy.
Last but not least is Ron Penner.
Ron would be about my height, or at least, that's how I remember him. He
would also be about my age. He has a full head of dark hair, graying around
the edges. I have the impression that he's verbally inclined. He's obviously
exceedingly well versed in literature. He's written at least a few poems,
but said that essays are his stock in trade. At first, he seemed sober
to the point of being somber, but then his sense of humor emerged, and
he was as full of fun as everyone else. I can still see the twinkle in
his (blue) eyes. And of course, like the other four, he's transcendentally
brilliant. I intuit Ron to be compassionate and a true gentleman.
"Which brings us to Fred and
Kay Vaughn. Fred recently retired from Boeing after a career as an aerospace
engineer. Fred is also the standard age of 58. Fred is probably about 6'
tall, with a white mustache and close-cropped beard. He's square-faced,
with blue eyes. From what Fred has said about himself, I've gathered that
he's not afraid to stand up for what he believes. Fred would come across
as outgoing and down-to-earth, but you wouldn't be around him long before
his 1-in-30,000-to 1-in-1,000,000 IQ manifested itself. Fred is working
on a novel concept in the area of relativity.
"Fred and Kay were head over
heels during Fred's college years, and they were married between Fred's
junior and senior years at the University of Washington. After receiving
his degree in physics and after six more years with both working, he and
Kay became interested in raising thoroughbred horses. It was at that time
that their daughter, Nola, arrived, followed four years later by their
son, Sean.
"Fred had some funny stories
to tell. One was about the time he "flipped the car". His parents went
away one evening after warning Fred not to take the car while they were
gone. So, of course, as soon as they were out of sight, Fred headed out
with the car to pick up another 18-year-old. The two boys drove over to
another 18-year-old's house who owned--or whose father owned--a pink Buick.
On the way there, following the pink Buick, Fred found a stretch of road
being resurfaced that was covered with pea-sized gravel.Whee-e-e! What
a gas! Fred began to skid around curves just the way they do in movie chases.
What fun! On the way home, he did it again, and this time, he lost control.
His foot was locked on the brake, with the car heading for a tree. He managed
to finagle it over to a field, and it wasn't until the last moment that
he discovered the ditch in front of the field. It flipped the car forward
on its back. When Fred came to, he was upside down in the front seat, with
the other boy lying against the (missing) back window. Unharmed, they managed
to crawl out of a front window of the car. They contrived to phone the
boy with the pink Buick, who drove them home. This boy insisted upon coming
in the house with Fred while Fred explained to his father what had happened
to the family car. ("What would MY Dad say if I wrecked his pink Buick?
This HAS to be exciting!) Fred decided that with the other kid looking
on, he needed to sound cool, so he said, "Hi, Dad. I flipped the car."
That was not a shrewd move. Fred said his father never lost his temper,
but for this, Dad was willing to make an exception. Fred said his father
turned several shades of purple, and then went to the kitchen for a Coke
until he could get himself under control. Then they drove to the scene
of the crime. he next morning, after righting the car, he made Fred drive
it home on a short towrope. Fred was schmussed down under the caved-in
roof, with glass fragments from the decimated windshield flying in his
face.
"Kay is a blue-eyed blonde who
had to be a child bride. She trains thoroughbred race horses. She waited
on us hand-and-foot while we were there. (I felt guilty about it. It'll
take me months to learn my proper place again.) She was a most-gracious
hostess. And of course, Eve helped her.
"Fred and Kay have two children,
Nola and Sean, as mentioned above, and two grandchildren: Carrick, who
is four, and Sierra, who is 15 months. They were all a delight. Nola and
her husband, Clay, are pharmacists. Sean and Carrick
joined us for our
Chicago Bulls basketball tournament, and for supper on Thursday night.
(Carrick gave us a driving exhibition in his Power Wheels, with Sierra
as his passenger.) Clay and Nola stayed overnight on Friday night, where
they helped us old fogies play a pretty confused game of musical sofa seats.
That first night (Tuesday, August
10th), we talked about the Langan Cognitive Theoretical Model of the Universe
(CTMU). Fred and Bob Park asked me whether I understood it, and if so,
how I would assess it. I said that I felt that I was getting there, although
I'll still have some other questions to ask before I can really defend
it. I said that I'm committed to understanding it well enough to defend
it, to certify Chris' authorship, and to help get it into journals, if
that's Chris' desire. Then Fred explained some ideas he has regarding the
area of special relativity (on which I've been working, as you know). I
started for bed about one a. m. As I took my shower, I thought about what
Fred had said, and realized that it raises interesting questions, so I
padded back down to the living room to telegraph my Archimedean (bathtub)
insight.
The next day was Fred and Kay's
day to keep their granddaughter and her two Italian greyhounds. That afternoon,
we got into a basketball game: Kay, Fred, and Bob Park against Eve, Sean
(Shawn?), and me. (With Sean on our side, it wasn't as unbalanced as it
sounds.) We had a rip-roaringly good time. Eve, Sean, and I lost but not
by the enormous margin you might expect of a fumble-foot like me. Meanwhile,
Sean's son, Carrick, was playing his own game of basketball with his 4'-high
plastic hoop.
Fred Britton arrived from Vancouver
that evening. The next day, Fred told of his adventures in the externally
exterior world of exogenous outside affairs that caused his hair to evacuate.
(I believe that Fred is the most genuinely knowledgeable person I've ever
met. If Fred doesn't know it, it hasn't happened.) By this time, you didn't
need a Baedeker's Guide or a list of IQ scores to inform you that
(1) these guys are as smart as
they're advertised to be; and
(2) they have very ticklish funnybones.
The Mega Test must be doing something
right.
The conversation soared, pinioned,
fluted, and scintillated. Bob Park pointed out that among the Hebrews,
the best educated–the rabbis–had the largest families, whereas in many
other religions, the best educated were celibate. Welcome to real-life
Eugenics–and Dysgenics! He told about Australia investing megabucks in
developing their own submarine only to find out that it's very noisy. It
couldn't sneak up on a sleeping lighthouse. He also mentioned the ominous
trend, occurring in the U. S. as well, of consolidations and mergers within
the media, with the attendant potential for news management. Bob mentioned
some changes in immigration policies that could help maintain the party
currently in power. Bob talked about his experiences as a live-by-his-wits,
software troubleshooter. He said that his biggest problem was that of convincing
potential customers that he could do what they considered impossible. During
the course of the conversation, I mentioned the worldwide Foucault pendulum
experiments that Dr. David Noever is coordinating under the imprimatur
of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (my alma mater). (Chris Langan kindly
apprised me of these experiments conducted during the August solar eclipse.)
There is (conflicting) evidence that something anomalous happens to the
plane of rotation of a Foucault pendulum during a solar eclipse. It was
so meaningful to Bob that he was frightened by the news. It dovetails with
what he feels will be revolutionary ideas that he plans to present in "Gift
of Fire".
We began to discuss the reasons
why there is so much dissension within HiQ societies. Is it "all chiefs
and no Indians"? I mentioned the "Prodigious and Precocious" bulletin board
that Kevin Kearney had recommended to me. It's frequented primarily by
young mothers of gifted children, and it's an online support group. They
share information concerning gifted education, and news about the family
picnic they had last night. They're very courteous with each other, and
very modest and humble. They're very supportive and positive with each
other. They're very different from us guys. ("They have pictures on their
walls, we have dents from batted balls... They have jump ropes, we have
guns. They have daughters, we have sons") Anyway, I mentioned an article
I had read observing nature selects for intelligence in primate leaders.
Fred Britton pointed out that primates have alpha males. There could be
a biological basis for dissension. But it could also be that for most of
us, we're the smartest people we've ever known. Most of the people within
our daily spans don't know what should be done as well as we do. Then when
we meet those who are as smart as, or–fend forbear!–smarter that we are,
we feel competitive with, or threatened by them. Swollen, delicate egos?
Compulsive need to control? Spoiled in some ways, maybe? Outsiders? Everyone
a leader, no one a follower? Fred Britton mentioned the idea of a hyper-democracy.
We kicked that gong around, but I don't remember any clear-cut conclusions.
The next night, (Thursday night)
Kerry Williams arrived from Anchorage, and we definitely had a quorum.
Kerry had two patent applications that he wanted us to review and witness.
As the engineering presences, Fred Vaughan and I did that.
One of the questions was, "Do
you have trouble communicating with folk who are more than 30 points of
IQ removed from your empyrean strata?" Everybody (not including Ron Penner,
who hadn't yet arrived) agreed that they found it difficult to suffer fools
gladly. As might be expected, they found it most difficult in the work
environment, particularly when they had to deal with bosses who weren't
smart enough to understand what they were saying, and weren't savvy enough
to "stand out of their light". I gathered that Bob Park didn't really realize
how smart he really was until he took the Mega Test. Then he began checking
out those around him, and was amazed to find that what he found trivial,
others couldn't understand at all (like his GOF Seance, which we'll discuss
later.) Kerry said that he's learned to cope with the pedestrian minds
that he encounters on his construction job. He said that the men with whom
he works have learned that he knows his onions. Everyone present agreed
that the serious problems arise with those who have IQs between 120 and
140. They feel that they know all the answers, and they're ready to challenge
anyone who thinks they're smarter. Chris Langan has mentioned "acudummies".
Someone also said that those with IQs of 130 have the world on the half-shell.
They're a lot smarter than the average grunt–smart enough to commune with
wiser minds–and yet not so smart that they can't communicate with the butcher,
the baker, and the candlestick maker.
I asked, "How do you communicate
with family members who are not within a 30-point IQ range?" But those
clever husbands never answered.
We got into such questions as
"At what age did you learn to read?" Several said that they didn't read
much until they started school. (Paul Johns, Megan, has mentioned that
he didn't begin to read much before starting school, although he was conversing
like a three-year-old by the age of one.) One of the group said that he
had known another in his school who was smarter than he, and that he had
encountered others along the road of life whom he deemed his mental superiors.
But it seems that individual who had been smarter than he in school is
one of the smarter men in North America. Two of the group–Bob Park and
Kerry Williams–lack college degrees. They were bored out of their skulls
by the material presented in lecture format in college classrooms. All
of the attendees are characterized by wide-ranging interests and talents–an
embarrassment of riches. When great ideas spring up like bubbles in a lemon
fizz, it's hard to remain focussed on such dusty topics such as learning
German vocabulary.
One of the topics of interest
was Bob and Eve Park's exploration of the vestiges of her photographic
memory. Bob asked Eve to try to remember what was on the pages of some
of the pages she had "photographed" as a child. She began trying to reconstruct
"Christopher Robin". She would close her eyes and squint, underscoring
the visual character of her recollection. She was able to mentally re-visualize
the pages fairly well, and was able to read those with large print. However,
there were other documents, such as her pages and pages of detailed college
course notes, that didn't lend themselves to mental reconstitution. It
seemed as though we established that her photographic images were still
largely intact after three decades of dormancy. However, her ability to
lay down new photographic images has evaporated.
Eve said that as a child, she
thought that everyone had her abilities. It was only after she grew up
that she realized she could do what other children couldn't. She said that
it led to problems in school because she would finish her tests almost
immediately, and the teachers wouldn't believe that she could be done so
quickly. She would start to talk with other children and end up being sent
to the headmaster's office. The school talked her parents into letting
her skip a grade, but Eve said she thought that was a mistake. First, she
was small for her age, and second, the other children resented her.
All about ME!
Now comes the part that I enjoy
the most: talking about ME, and about my agenda at the hacienda. I'm a
(Ph. D.) physicist retired from NASA and Georgia Tech. (I'm still on the
Georgia Tech roster on a part-time-as-needed basis.) I might or might not
still fall in the 4+ sigma IQ level, since I've made a perfect or nearly
perfect score on the IQ tests I've taken whose scores I've known. Unfortunately,
I haven't finished rechecking the Mega Test. (With all the writing I'm
doing, the rechecking is proceeding with all the deliberate speed of a
snail on valium.) During my very busy working career, I lost touch with
IQ issues. Although Mother was a high school graduate and Dad dropped out
of school after the tenth grade, I would probably fall into Grady Towers'
"committed strategy" category. Still, I probably wouldn't have made it
through my Ph. D. program had I not had a very savvy and supportive wife.
I had too many competing ideas and interests.
During the first ten years of
my professional tenure, I had the part time opportunity to pursue work
of my choice, and I did so with gusto, but when the NASA Reductions-in-Force
began in 1968, I was remanded to management. For the next twenty-five years,
I did what any halfway intelligent high school student could have done.
After my retirement, one of the initiatives that has commended itself before
I run out of time and mind is that of trying to prevent what happened to
me from happening to other severely gifted people. Our present strategy
seems to be that of reaping whatever genius spontaneously appears in a
system set up to thwart it. What would happen if we encouraged highly productive
output among our best and brightest? It seems to me that we are like mankind
in the hunter-gatherer phase before we learned to plant and nurture crops,
or like pearl divers before society learned to cultivate pearls. We're
using our supercomputers the same way we would use PCs. Years ago, Terman
announced wistfully that no one in his California Longitudinal Study of
Gifted Children became recognized as a world-class genius. On the other
hand, he and his group (understandably) made no effort to cultivate genius
in his sample. Last summer, when I began to explore this topic on the Internet,
I was appalled when I learned what hardships have been imposed upon our
severely gifted, and especially, as Chris Langan puts it, our "forgotten
gifted". I was one of the lucky ones. A sizable fraction of our very brightest
don't get college degrees, let alone Ph. D.'s. That's a scandal! They don't
get the chance to be wasted at the Ph. D. level.
The general public (including
me a year ago) doesn't know that these outrages are taking place. The general
public wants our best and brightest working on our toughest problems, and
supposes that this is what is happening. So my agenda at Fred and Kay's
open house was to discuss with my fellow revelers what they think about
this. Would they welcome a program to improve their lot? (Don't laugh!
Some people wouldn't.) If so, what would they like to see?
The Internet seems to me to offer
the most extraordinary possibilities for communication among and support
for the severely gifted.
Among the laundry lists of ideas
for helping the severely gifted that I had scratched out furiously on the
Southwest Airlines note pad on the way to Tacoma were:
A Laundry List
Some plusses to such a scheme might be that