I appreciate the contextual disclaimer.ps. Everything in the text is oversimplified and too extreme. It's pretty much a rant, but it makes a coherent point. Any thoughts? — Qmeri
But someone who loved Bush and was skeptical about Obama, and based this distrust in part on Obama's clearly more complicated and well organized speech, I think would be very unlikely to say that Obama is more intelligent, especially where it counts: policies and ideas that are good for us and in relation to those that are bad for us. — Coben
Okay, yes I agree that there can be a distrust of people who seem intelligent, but more generally there can be a distrust of people who seem more able in some way, for instance of people who have a greater physical force, or people who have more power for some reason. And the reason for that is easy to see, when we don’t know someone well we don’t know whether they have good or ill intentions with respect to ourselves, so not blindly trusting that they have good intentions is a necessary way to protect oneself. Especially if the other person or group of people is seen to be powerful in some way. — leo
But intelligence is peculiar in that practically all the systems we use to achieve trustworthy information require intelligence. So if we distrust intelligence, we also distance ourselves from much of the trustworthy information available. — Qmeri
When someone clearly acts through conscious consideration, we say to him: "Stop acting, be yourself!", as if conscious consideration couldn't be a part of what someone truly is. Most politicians try to give the impression that they and their ideas are simple and honest. And Lynyrd Skynyrd is singing about how a simple man is someone you can trust and understand.
There is an evolutionary reason we distrust intelligence. Of course intelligence could be used for inventions and adaptation to the environment even in prehistory. But on social level, the main new thing intelligence brought to the table was that dirty, dirty scheming and lying. You had to be always on your toes when someone was particularly intelligent... any suggestion he made could be for good reasons. But it could also be just to get rid of competition or to get to fuck every woman in the tribe behind your backs.
And this was a good reason to distrust the intelligentsia for millenia. But then came many new things that changed the game. One of them was science - a practical system which had a built in system against lying and corruption and which became the most trustworthy system on the whole planet because of that. And then most of the honest intelligent people became quite the fans of science and they started to loudly declare how scientific they were. They didn't realize that the primitive intuitions of people simply saw arrogant people boasting about their intelligence. And so the intuitions shouted: "Red alert! People saying complicated things hard to understand! Do not trust them! Trust those people who say intuitively simple things!" without realizing that the intuitively simple things they trusted were specifically chosen for them by dishonest intelligent manipulators.
And so we get the modern world: where the scientists and engineers give everyone almost all the resources they have, but where the leaders rarely represent science or engineering.
ps. Everything in the text is oversimplified and too extreme. It's pretty much a rant, but it makes a coherent point. Any thoughts? — Qmeri
And you talk of trustworthy information, what is trustworthy information? In another thread you weren’t even willing to agree that “something exists” is trustworthy information, that it is truth, so if you won’t agree to that why do you expect people to blindly believe what others say simply because they pretend to be intelligent, simply because they pretend to be somehow more able, to be providers of truth? — leo
An intelligent person can identify true intelligence with his intelligence. What can someone without that skill do to distinguish between a person who actually understands something and someone who who just pretends? I really don't have an answer for that. Make basic education better? Make everyone more intelligent? — Qmeri
I do agree that no one ever says it out aloud or even thinks consciously that he distrusts someone because that person is intelligent. — Qmeri
I think his lies were simple and context based. He knew he was doing the bidding of powerful people and not being up front about that. He knew he wasn't really making decisions. He must have known many of the real motivations for things like the Iraqi war 2, since I can't imagine Cheney and Rumsfeld bothering to hide their goals and interests around him. His lies were not intricate. His lies were simple and he could handle them. As a good, little front man needs to be able to handle. Of course I am sure that he believed, to some degree, what he was saying also. But this is true of intelligent liars, perhaps even more so. We often convince ourselves first, and if you have better bs skills, and further have a more detached mind, you have an advantage lying to yourself and others.And when I think about it... even I found Bush to be quite honest because he seemed to be so simple that he probably wasn't able to create complicated lies even if he tried to... unless he was next level and that was all for show. — Qmeri
I guess I think there's some good intuitive intelligence around questioning the use of resources and use of experts to send people to the moon, right now at least, and a couple of decades ago also. I am not saying there is no pattern where people reject things simply because they don't understand them. But in the end this seems facile to me when given as a blanket explanation for people's reactions to the language use and projects of the very intelligent. I'd get into specific projects I think are idiotic, carried out by people with extremely high IQs and rapidly changing things 'out there' but that would likely hijack the thread. I see a lot of cleverness posing as intelligence out there. Often with a dangerously narrow focus and often working for corporations or governments with agendas that are seriously problematic. Negative reactions to these projects are dismissed as emotional, when in fact there are emotions and desires driving both sides. At a tree level one side is showing a great deal of intelligence. At a forest level, I think they are a lot dumber than they realize and on those issues much dumber than the people they dismiss. And of course it is ad hom at base.I started to laugh uproarously; i told Paul his utterance imitated that of those people, who are full of self-confidence, and if they don't understand something, they declare it stupid. — god must be atheist
I do agree that a person who is not that intelligent is in a precarious situation. An intelligent person can identify true intelligence with his intelligence. What can someone without that skill do to distinguish between a person who actually understands something and someone who who just pretends? I really don't have an answer for that. Make basic education better? Make everyone more intelligent? People being aware of their intuitions against intelligence couldn't hurt? It's a complex problem, but acknowledging it as a problem is the start. — Qmeri
There is an even bigger problem: how can you tell if you are truly intelligent, or if you simply believe you are because you aren’t truly intelligent? — leo
Whereas the elitist mentality is counterproductive, it is stuck in dogma, spreads them forcefully, and arbitrarily dismisses important insights or discoveries that other people attempt to communicate. — leo
Although, we do have guite a lot of ways to measure things associated with intelligence objectively, like math, different forms of memory, and countless other things. And while the measurements will never be a perfect assessment of general intelligence (not least because we don't have an objective definition for general intelligence) they are good clues of what one can functionally do with their intelligence. And people who in their lives do badly in these measurable things, seem to distrust intelligence more. — Qmeri
In this way, I would certainly caution against dichotomizing higher intelligence and basic existential/human hierarchical needs as them being opposing values. Maybe think about how one can integrate both values of living. — 3017amen
Agathon: I'm afraid the word is bad. You have been condemned to death.
Allen: Ah, it saddens me that I should cause debate in the senate.
Agathon: No debate. Unanimous.
Allen: Really?
Agathon: First ballot.
Allen: Hmmm. I had counted on a little more support.
Simmias: The senate is furious over your ideas for a Utopian state.
Allen: I guess I should never have suggested having a philosopher-king.
Simmias: Especially when you kept pointing to yourself and clearing your throat.
— Woody Allen, 'My Apology'
Well, you seem to disregard any point I make about intelligence until I give a robust definition for intelligence, which I can't do. Understandable, I guess. But irregardless of what general intelligence is, we do test people in very specific skills, like most major areas of science. — Qmeri
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