This is pretty interesting, courtesy of some graduate student in computation and neural systems at CalTech:
http://booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr/
There may be an issue with whether Facebook actually provides a representative sample of the attributed institution, but a lot of the results reflect my gut feeling for what should be about right…
Interesting.
I like your title better than the title he used, since I doubt any of those books degrade intellect.
I’m curious what the difference is between “The Holy Bible” and “The Bible”, any ideas.
So, which of those are your favorites?
…and why aren’t my favorite literary classics not these, you know classics like Garfield and The Cat In the Hat…
Interesting. I scored a 1250, but most of the books listed that I’ve read fell in the 1100-1150 range.
I notice that Bible, Holy Bible thing too. The people I’ve heard refer to the good book as “The Holy Bible” are the kind who take it as the literal word of god, whereas those who refer to it as “The Bible” regard it more as a work of literature.
I see smart people are better at being pretentious.
[quote]Ruggerlife wrote:
Interesting.
I like your title better than the title he used, since I doubt any of those books degrade intellect.[/quote]
Yeah, I think that goes to Zap’s point - and I think he was trying to tweak people…
[quote]Ruggerlife wrote:
I’m curious what the difference is between “The Holy Bible” and “The Bible”, any ideas.[/quote]
He took the book titles from the Facebook aggregated top-10 lists for the colleges, so I’m guessing it just reflects how people listed the book
[quote]Ruggerlife wrote:
So, which of those are your favorites?
…and why aren’t my favorite literary classics not these, you know classics like Garfield and The Cat In the Hat…[/quote]
Only really smart people would list “Cat In the Hat,” so I’m sure it didn’t make the aggregate top-10 lists because there are a lot fewer really smart people, particularly on Facebook… =-)
Same reason for why any of my particular favorites might not be on the list…
Check out the FAQ for some interesting tidbits: http://virgil.gr/42
My IQ went up 10 points after reading Freakonomics.
Where’s the love for the nonfiction? I don’t think there was anything on that list other than Freakonomics.
[quote]etaco wrote:
Where’s the love for the nonfiction? I don’t think there was anything on that list other than Freakonomics. [/quote]
The Bible was on there twice, man…
Nice find BB.
LOL.
I fucking love it.
Although I refuse to believe that reading “Atlas Shrugged” makes you any smarter. It’s far more likely to turn you into an angry, ugly, cunty old hag. Kind of like Ann Coulter…
I never took the SAT so I don’t have it to compare to my choice of books (ACT is all you need for some Southern schools).
But I feel like a bad motherfucker right now because I’m in the middle of reading Catch-22 for fun 
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
LOL.
I fucking love it.
Although I refuse to believe that reading “Atlas Shrugged” makes you any smarter. It’s far more likely to turn you into an angry, ugly, cunty old hag. Kind of like Ann Coulter…[/quote]
I realize you were just making a joke, but I wanted to point out that the researcher who created this page pointed out that this isn’t meant to spark a ‘causation’ argument–does reading the book make you smarter, or do you read the book because you’re smarter?–merely to see if there is a correlation.
That said, this definitely passes the eye test in my opinion.
I get where they’re coming from, and I like the test.
That said, I actually felt dumber after reading 100 Years of Solitude. Same thing goes for Wild At Heart and Mere Christianity.
I take that back. I couldn’t get more than halfway through any of them. THATS where I started feeling dumber.
I notice that on the distribution on the bottom of the page, erotica is usually a low correlating book but is thrown WAY into the high end by Lolita. Must be women’s colleges. I don’t know a single dude whose read the book.
The movie now…
[quote]Otep wrote:
I don’t know a single dude whose read the book.
[/quote]
Really? You should. Nabokov was a phenomenal writer.
Yaaay for Ender’s Game, a fabulous, thought-provoking novel. I read this at Barnes and Noble in 3 days right before Christmas.
I’m not surprised that the Holy Bible makes you dumb. I mean it has third grade grammar and circular logic in it.
[quote]undeadlift wrote:
I’m not surprised that the Holy Bible makes you dumb. I mean it has third grade grammar and circular logic in it.[/quote]
anyone who has looked at that site and read this far into the thread, yet still believes that the creator is saying that these books “make you dumb” should not be passing judgements on anyone else.
[quote]undeadlift wrote:
I’m not surprised that the Holy Bible makes you dumb. I mean it has third grade grammar and circular logic in it.[/quote]
Third grade grammar? Which translation of the Bible has “third grade grammar?” Surely you don’t mean the King James Version? Along with Shakespeare it pretty much marks the high point of the English language.
[quote]IvanDmitritch wrote:
undeadlift wrote:
I’m not surprised that the Holy Bible makes you dumb. I mean it has third grade grammar and circular logic in it.
Third grade grammar? Which translation of the Bible has “third grade grammar?” Surely you don’t mean the King James Version? Along with Shakespeare it pretty much marks the high point of the English language.
[/quote]
Agreed. It’s a great piece of fiction.