do smokers have a lower iq?

[Barry_Green]

Pointing out older people who smoked doesn't really seem to have relevance to the argument, because there was a time when EVERYONE smoked. Nobody talked about or knew about health risks.

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I AGREE

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I AGREE

 

[J.R. Hudson]

It's the same people who eat like shi* and never work out (cardio or can't lift their body weight) that decry smoking.

Unless you're an Iron Man ? Eff off.


Smokers know smoking is bad; but 90% of the population eat sugar, fats and glycogen spiking foods that are going to kill them while they moan about smokers.

I always say

You have a problem with smoking ?

Give up carbs, white bleached flower and sugar for 30 days.

Melt down ensues

 

[Nektonic]

Well if the fat man smokes, that settles it.

 

[RodThompson]

I quit after 15 years. Whilst smoking, I made a 1250 on my SATs, a 99 on my ASVAB pretest, and got kicked out of high school two weeks before graduating. I guess it averages out.

 

[Chris Light]

It's the same people who eat like shi* and never work out (cardio or can't lift their body weight) that decry smoking.

Unless you're an Iron Man ? Eff off.


Smokers know smoking is bad; but 90% of the population eat sugar, fats and glycogen spiking foods that are going to kill them while they moan about smokers.

I always say

You have a problem with smoking ?

Give up carbs, white bleached flower and sugar for 30 days.

Melt down ensues

way to be JR. i'm with you...

 

[Finnegan]

Well it HAS to be true or else where did the saying "he smoked himself retarded" come from? RIGHT?!:undecided

 

[SonicStates]

+1 For JR!!!

 

[xqzt]

daaaaa....I need a cigarette.... I hate know-it-alls.

 

[MattinSTL]

I'm gonna' re-state that I think anybody could argue that ANY "negative" choice in life isn't smart... and the more bad choices someone makes the more you could make the case that they are less intelligent.

It's the same thing J.R. said... in different words.

Also (again)... social IQ... meaning that everybody has various coping mechanisms for handling life. You could also argue that people on anxiety medicines have lower IQ, etc. (This is in favor of debating that smoking IS NOT an indicator of intelligence, BTW... no more so then any other "negative" choice. I don't believe that substance use and intelligence are necessarily related... Look at some of the most brilliant comedians, etc. etc. OR... to put it another way... just because you're an astronaut doesn't mean you won't drive across the country in a diaper trying to kill your cheater boyfriend's wife.)



Teh neckst thing you're going to argew is that masterbayshun makes people less smarter.

 

[xqzt]

I'm sure cellphone use makes a dent on brain cells too. Are smartphones the next oral-affixiation?

 

[Sad Max]

It's the same people who eat like shi* and never work out (cardio or can't lift their body weight) that decry smoking.

I train five days per week and eat meat, nuts, fruit and vegetables. And I can lift my own body weight (squat, dead lift, chin up, or bench). I'm going to posit that I therefore get to have an opinion...

I don't really decry smoking; heck, the world is filled with ways to stupidly kill yourself and once you're over eighteen your choices are pretty much your business. I only object to having to share in picking up any part of the tab for the consequences, and picking up the stink on my own person...

Unless you're an Iron Man ? Eff off.

Well...actually I don't know that I'm necessarily up to Iron Man standards. I may have to eff off after all...

Smokers know smoking is bad; but 90% of the population eat sugar, fats and glycogen spiking foods that are going to kill them while they moan about smokers.

This may be in part because sugar, fats and glycogen-spiking foods don't generally drift over past the next person's taste buds and into their digestive system or onto the next person's clothes. But generally it's true that the guy talking around a mouthful of Big Mac and MacFlurry while searching for lost change in the folds of his own abdomen is in a bad position to lecture others about the healthfulness of their personal habits.

I always say

You have a problem with smoking ?

Give up carbs, white bleached flower and sugar for 30 days.

Melt down ensues

I can truthfully report that after about a year sans baked goods, grain products and refined sugar I feel much better than I have since I was in my 20s. And I have also found that even looking at a box of PopTarts or chocolate-covered whatever in the break room has become mildly nauseating...

It's about the habits one establishes. Given time and a very little bit of discipline habits are mutable. You can pick up good habits (that is to say, habits that are personally beneficial to you) the same way one picks up bad ones.

 

[Jordan_S]

...while searching for lost change in the folds of his own abdomen...

:laugh:

 

[Dingos8mybaby]

Threads like this one remind me why I luv da 'User...

BTW, this is what I think of whenever somebody brings up the issue of IQ tests (methods, results, VALIDITY, etc). It's an anecdote from Isaac Asimov.

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
Isaac Asimov


What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)


All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?


For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.


Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.


Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"


Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."


And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

 

[Chamber005]

Not to be black and white on the issue, but if someone who is an adult is deciding to stay addicted to something that causes bad breath, bad teeth, bad circulation, heart disease, cancer and a host of breathing issues (not to mention if you're a parent your children are 80% more likely to smoke, hence passing on the above mentioned to them), I think the proof is in the pudding.

A guy who eats a cup cake once every two weeks or smokes a cigar once a month is someone who has the intellegence to manage themselves and their physicality effectively.

Addicts are idiots. Weak-minded. They're incapable of separating themselves from the addiction. Some addicts are so stupid they think they actually WANT to be smoking; they've convinced themselves that their addiction is actually their personal perspective. Because yes, of course your physiology is begging that you poison it daily.

It doesn't matter how many facts you know, if you can't manage to manage yourself effectively you have no concept or knowledge of self and so in the matters of the self, you're a slack-jawed yokel.

IMO.

 

[J.R. Hudson]

You only live once Chamber005.

And do tell; what are your habits that others may find so offensive ? Or have you none ?

-

Apparently you missed the link earlier in the thread. Yeeah, lots of yokels and idiots in there.

 

[Luis Caffesse]

I would venture to say that it is easy to consider an addict 'stupid' if you have never had to overcome an addiction yourself.

I suppose we could just as easily say that alcoholics and heroin addicts are idiots for not giving up their vices. It's easy to say from the outside that they are just weak minded - but if it were that simple to quit then I would assume that everyone would just do it - and that goes for smoking, alcohol, heroin, meth, etc etc etc.

 

[nosys70]

it is not a matter of IQ or intelligence, it is a matter performance.
A study showed that if you take 20min a day , pure oxygen, your IQ is raising.
So , no ,you do not become smarter, your brain is just working better.
On the other side, the guy who put several hours a day, carbon oxyd and other lethal product into his body, does nothing to help his brain (and the rest) work at best.
Just ask a smoker to run 300 feet versus a non smoker and you will see that it is not only a problem
for the brain.

anybody would cleverly guess that anyway ,an IQ test on soldier is meaningless.

 

[Sad Max]

Not to be black and white on the issue,

Although you're going to be...

but if someone who is an adult is deciding to stay addicted

Does 'deciding to stay addicted' qualify as oxymoronic? I'm pretty sure that it does. Addiction can interrupt the addict's decision-making process. That's part of what qualifies it as addiction.

to something that causes bad breath, bad teeth, bad circulation, heart disease, cancer and a host of breathing issues (not to mention if you're a parent your children are 80% more likely to smoke, hence passing on the above mentioned to them), I think the proof is in the pudding.

Why do people insist upon mangling this expression?

The proof is not 'in the pudding.' The expression is The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. George Orwell once pointed out that using phrases in a manner that makes it clear that you don't understand their original construction and meaning implies that you are mostly stringing together chunks of verbiage rather than constructing real arguments. I suspect that he was right, about that.

A guy who eats a cup cake once every two weeks or smokes a cigar once a month is someone who has the intellegence to manage themselves and their physicality effectively.

Disinclination to addiction <> proof of high intelligence. Witness the number of clearly intelligent people - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William S. Burroughs, J. Paul Getty and a host of others - who were also addicts.

Addicts are idiots. Weak-minded.

Mostly what you are doing here is flaunting your lack of knowledge regarding addiction. But at least you seem to be enjoying it.

They're incapable of separating themselves from the addiction.

That's part of what makes it an addiction.

Some addicts are so stupid they think they actually WANT to be smoking; they've convinced themselves that their addiction is actually their personal perspective. Because yes, of course your physiology is begging that you poison it daily.

Yes, that's just about precisely what a physiological dependency is: your metabolism has come to demand the addictive substance. For some people their physiology doesn't just beg, it insists.

It doesn't matter how many facts you know,

...or how many you don't know...

if you can't manage to manage yourself effectively you have no concept or knowledge of self and so in the matters of the self, you're a slack-jawed yokel.

IMO.

From now on when I think of 'slack jawed yokels' I'll see Buzz Aldrin and Ted Kennedy and Robin Williams and Truman Capote...

 

[J.R. Hudson]

 

[Chamber005]

Although you're going to be...



Does 'deciding to stay addicted' qualify as oxymoronic? I'm pretty sure that it does. Addiction can interrupt the addict's decision-making process. That's part of what qualifies it as addiction.



Why do people insist upon mangling this expression?

The proof is not 'in the pudding.' The expression is The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. George Orwell once pointed out that using phrases in a manner that makes it clear that you don't understand their original construction and meaning implies that you are mostly stringing together chunks of verbiage rather than constructing real arguments. I suspect that he was right, about that.



Disinclination to addiction <> proof of high intelligence. Witness the number of clearly intelligent people - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William S. Burroughs, J. Paul Getty and a host of others - who were also addicts.



Mostly what you are doing here is flaunting your lack of knowledge regarding addiction. But at least you seem to be enjoying it.



That's part of what makes it an addiction.



Yes, that's just about precisely what a physiological dependency is: your metabolism has come to demand the addictive substance. For some people their physiology doesn't just beg, it insists.



...or how many you don't know...



From now on when I think of 'slack jawed yokels' I'll see Buzz Aldrin and Ted Kennedy and Robin Williams and Truman Capote...

Listing a bunch of people who have been addicts in their lifetime doesn't mean anything. You say these people are smart; I say they're only smart if they overcame their addiction. If their addiction killed them or their lives were a long stretch of painful experiences because of the drug, I call them idiots.

You can tell me that you think a person who takes drugs until the drugs kill them are smart people, but I'm going to disagree with you. I've seen smart people find a way, unassisted, out of addiction; I've seen dumb ass people fail to do it. But again, maybe you consider intelligence and common sense to be apples and oranges. I don't.

But you're welcome to your position.