Illusory Superiority
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
It seems that recently, a lot of attention is spent on making the world more inclusive. However, this inclusivity does not seem to span the spectrum of intelligence.
Overall, I assume that smarter people are being favored a lot, with better job opportunities, higher chances at finding a funny life partner, and receiving more freedom of choice overall.
(Luckily, if you are really smart you may notice an abundance of negative things, and make your own life miserable, so there appears to be some cut-off point.)
Would it be a good idea to make society more inclusive for the less fortunate, intelligence wise? How would we go on about this?
I for one would like more government interference, so that everyone profits equally. But perhaps this is not the best solution?
Invariably people twist this into 'access to education', but I'm trying to get to the actual natural ability one may or may not possess prior to any societal (school) honing
By eliminating advanced school courses, perhaps? https://www.blackenterprise.com/parents-outraged-school-deci...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusion_(disability_rights...
But my question is, why does it matter that everyone profits equally? Especially if everyone’s basic needs are met?
It does matter for democracy. If rich people spent all their money on blackjack and hookers, it would be fine. But they don't, lot of it is spent on lobbying and keeping the social control over others. (And even if well-intentioned, it's irrelevant, because it still robs others their agency. Munger Hall is a good example.)
It's unlikely you can have ultra-rich without ultra-poor. That's why there should be limits to riches too.
This is a matter of getting money out of politics. Seems somewhat orthogonal.
Humans are all unique. At the same time humans don't vary that much. Compare with some other species (dogs are often used) where there is a wide range of size, intelligence, and any kind of thing humans might have bred dogs to do.
We are a social species. We pay lots and lots of attention to one another. We constantly compare people. That kind of scrutiny magnifies differences.
Add to this that we're pattern-manufacturing machines. If we stare at things that are ostensibly the same for long enough, we'll find some way to classify and order them.
> Would it be a good idea to make society more inclusive for the less fortunate, intelligence wise?
Why not take the opposite approach and teach that like any other human differences, they deserve to be celebrated, but like any other human differences, they're not really so different?
How does human genetic variation compare to e.g. different wild canine (sub)species, such as coyotes, red wolves, gray wolves, etc.?
I am not sure how is that opposite to inclusivity. Unless it's only performance - yeah we celebrate you're not smart but we won't change that you cannot afford rent.
First we would need to conclude that there is such a group of people. On this website I talked to peope who believe that the majority of people could become high performing mathematicians (something which no doubt is a sign of significant intelligence), when given the right learning methods. If that is true, surely every single person on earth could become a very decent engineer or participate in any other high paying job.
>I for one would like more government interference, so that everyone profits equally.
How would that look like? Even under the USSR intelligence still lead to better life outcomes.
The real solution is of course having a job market which can absorb the low performers and train them on useful tasks, which still allow them to earn a wage they can easily live of. The more automation and the wider the pool of low skill labor, the rarer those opportunities become.
Do we need to agree that first? One of two things are true, at least in broad outline:
1. Intelligence is genetic, so there are people who are more of less intelligent due to the luck of the genetic lottery.
2. Intelligence is due to employing the right learning methods, and some people are less intelligent due to not having been educated correctly.
Either way, there are some people who have bad luck when it comes to intelligence. And even if perfect education could in theory equalise these intelligence outcomes, making society more "inclusive" for the less intelligent might be the best thing to do until we manage to perfect our systems of education (if we ever do).
Education does not need to be perfect, I had the same teachers as my peers, many of them did far worse than me. If it is truly purely random chance that I learned far more than they did, not teaching them is a bizarre form of cruelty.
>luck of the genetic lottery
What? Genes are not luck, you literally are a genetic combination of your parents. Sure, there is variation, but your parents determine what the mean of that variation is. E.g. height is absolutely related to your parents height, so are many illnesses.
In terms of education, I agree that if we have the means to do better then it is cruel not to. But we probably don't, and aren't likely to soon, short of a fully completed science of the human brain. The success of my peers absolutely does not prove that the means exist that would work for me, in my particular circumstances and given my particular starting point.
We do. As is evident by the existence of many highly educated people.
>The success of my peers absolutely does not prove that the means exist that would work for me, in my particular circumstances and given my particular starting point.
It does. Unless there is some non-environmental difference.
>If your definition of "luck" is so restrictive as to say that a person's genes aren't luck
They aren't luck since they are predictable to a certain extent. It isn't luck that you get a high paying job after geting a good education either.
This really irks me because I know some people that are much, much smarter than they appear because they are a bit slower (and possibly less extrovert). In a 'just world' (which we clearly do not have) their chances would be at least equal. We seem to give speed simply too much weight.
Why do you think that would be the case? So long as there is value to be had from delivering a result faster, I would expect a correct solution delivered faster to be better than the same correct solution delivered more slowly.
It's like the classic "pick two" triangle of cheap, quick, or high quality. Of course we assign more weight to solutions that don't make us choose.
Because taking care to do something right has value too and that takes time. Not everybody is wired the same way and by prioritizing speed over correctness you may end up with sub-optimal solutions.
> So long as there is value to be had from delivering a result faster, I would expect a correct solution delivered faster to be better than the same correct solution delivered more slowly.
Correct is not a binary proposition, and by making it the same solution you are making my words say something that I did not imply: a solution can keep you moving but a good solution may save more work than just implementing any solution and may well be more future proof. Depending on the context it may in fact be the only solution that is really valid.
> It's like the classic "pick two" triangle of cheap, quick, or high quality. Of course we assign more weight to solutions that don't make us choose.
High quality may in the long term be cheaper and even faster, but you'll never know.
As a society we seem to value the quickly found ones over the ones that are found through a more contemplative process that requires some more time. And this means we may be throwing out some good stuff for the wrong reasons.
Slower answers involve more deliberate thinking rather than quick rote pattern matching. The speeders are good pattern matchers but not better thinkers. Let me give you an example from high school. I was in a math Olympics in the 7th grade and speed was not my thing so I did not have time to solve a problem while others did. On the other hand it appeared I got another question wrong while the speeders got it right. Fast forward a few weeks and it turns out I got it right and everybody else got it wrong including the professors who chose the math problems. So speed is just a metric after all, may enable you to cover more material but it's not everything.
I was passionate about math back then and remember enjoying slow and thorough thinking. Is there anything wrong with that??
It depends on the problem being solved and the probability that quicker solution could fail. A recent article posted on YC about solving puzzles [0] (I'll have to find the post), described a normal chess player with that of a grandmaster in how they thought about a single move. That move had a ratio of ways the move could backfire to it succeeding. A normal chess player has a ratio of 0.5:1. Where as the grandmaster's ratio floats around 5:1.
However, there is no free lunch, so these traits themselves must also be exploitable.
What psychological profile would be most effective at exploiting and preying on narcissists?
In a world of snakes, how can you be an effective mongoose?
It one time struck me how lame it is to expect empathy from people who have to fake it. I'd much prefer to accept them for who they are.
If you are kind and generous to them they consider you weak. If you scare or hurt them they respect you, they respect people who have power over them because they present all the interesting social challenges.
If you poke them with a cattle prod then give them a beer their experience is almost like giving a normal person a beer.
We should probably register them in a database along with as much personal information as possible. Not because it is useful (it might be) but because that is the kind of thing they respect. They will attempt to appeal to our empathy and cry about it to which we should respond with "ha-ha, sucks to be you."
The DB can be used to find employment where their qualities are beneficial. I talk with a guy one time who kills cows 8 hours per day. His coworkers are happy they don't have to do it. He said the cows visit them in their dreams, looking at them with their big scared sad eyes after the first jab doesn't kill them.
Cleaning up corpses after traffic accidents, defense lawyers for the indefensible, some military tasks, etc
> What psychological profile would be most effective at exploiting and preying on narcissists? > In a world of snakes, how can you be an effective mongoose?
I think they are pretty good at preying at each other. Bureaucrats, capitalists and politicians know how to put them to work by making them pine after a new job title, bigger salary, better social exposure etc.
The correlation between IQ and income is fairly well-studied. It is not linear, IQ is not trustworthy, and there are many exceptions, but do you really think that people who have an IQ below 80 get a chance at a high paying job in FAANG land?
It paints a picture of how intelligence equality might look, especially with governmental interference.
> I for one would like more government interference, so that everyone profits equally
How would this work?
Probably wealth redistribution and/or affirmative action
So my point is that it _is_ already being enforced.
I doubt that doing away with schools is in any way useful, but perhaps we can come up with better ideas?
I find it hard to tell if your entire comment is intended to be humorous
It is also something that is probably not well suited for a forum where most readers have (very) high intelligence and a fondness for liberalism -- so I was a bit unsure on how to pose the question tactfully, and added in some sympathetic gestures.
You do realize that every law is backed by violence, right? How many steps does it take to go from you choosing to no longer pay your property taxes to officers forcibly removing you from your home.
We know what can happen if you resist.
Our interactions on internet have done a great job in getting us to think that every thing needs to scale to the world. If you really care about the issue, solve the social problem locally and share the results and how you got there. If someone doesn't like it, they can always fork it, rinse and repeat.
Everything we allow the government to put its hands in inevitably becomes a disaster. See Social Security, Section 8 Housing, Education (Execution and Funding), Marriage, Divorce, Agriculture, Child Protection Services, etc. I can go on and on, but I think you get the point.
People and societies uplift themselves when they're forced to take responsibility.
It always amuses me how people seem to think that violence is involved in changing how goods are distributed, but not in enforcing the current distribution.
My point was about government incompetence. We all know they move slow and break things for generations to come. Would you rather our issue remain small and in our community, or face a felony trespassing charge that can potentially negative affect the rest of your life and the people you may be responsible for?
Why do you presume equality is a good thing? A person who provides half the value should receive the same compensation as someone who provides twice? Someone who sacrifices his life for another deserves the same honor as the loser rotting in front of his game console? Ugliness should receive the same awe and admiration as beauty? Foolish the same acknowledgement as wisdom? Falsehood the same ascent as truth? That one has more should be a reason to hate him because another has less? The better should always be favored over the worse. The notion of equality is inherently unjust and mendacious, obliterating all of the particular facts about any given individual that merit different responses. It is, as a rule, an expression of the gravest envy and the more virulent pride. It mediocritizes human beings and alienates them from themselves and proper self-understanding, instead of inspiring them to do and be their best, and accept who and what they are with humility. It seeks to "keep warm", whereas "the hard truth is that to achieve what is truly good for individuals and society requires the discipline of suffering, and that those who blind themselves to this are not the friends of mankind, but its enemies". Egalitarianism, despite its glorified name, is an expression of an extremely parochial and domestic pettiness common among human beings. Feeding it is the last thing you want to do.
Now, just because I totally reject the idea of equality, doesn't mean I don't think there aren't problems with the way things are. Radical individualism is at the heart of many of many problems today. Human beings are not self-sufficient, atomized, solitary beings. We are thoroughly social beings. That means we need others to live and to become who we are, as a statement of general fact. That doesn't mean we're entitled to whatever we want or even need from other human beings. It just means that human flourishing requires the social, and the social does entail certain obligations toward one another and to society and the human race as a whole. Isolated, individuals become easy to manipulate, and for oligarchic regimes, this is perhaps convenient (slavery is illegal, but there are other ways to accomplish similar results). The basic unit of society is social, but the individual as such is not a social unit. It is the family that is the basic unit. The march of radical individualist liberalism has been a succession of blows against the family, resulting in the alienation of individuals from the the family and, consequently, society in general. It is within family that human beings learn to be independent and strong. It is chiefly through the family that they develop into adulthood to be able to start their own families (not everyone has this privilege, and that's fine; there are other ways to live out one's familial nature). It is the family that is the locus of procreative power, of growth and regeneration. Society is but extended family. Destroy the family, and you destroy society and ultimately the individual.
So we have before us a toxic brew of entitlement on the one hand, and individualistic alienation on the other. Paradoxically, the individual is denigrated in the process. Fix the family, and you fix society and the individual.
(And in all the noise being made about equality vis-a-vis material goods, it is important to understand that poverty, not inequality, is the problem [0].)
[0] https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/09/poverty-no-inequali...
While, yes, there are developmental and cognitive disabilities, both inborn and acquired, that can reduce cognitive function, I have yet to see evidence that among people without any specific diagnosable disability, variations in "intelligence" cannot be explained (at least 80-95%) by, essentially, variations in upbringing.
From my personal observation (so no, not a scientific sample), people raised in a household where education is highly valued, by parents who genuinely care about them and are (able to be) engaged in their development and schooling tend to exhibit more of the traits of intelligence than people who are raised in households where education is derided as something for sissies or liberals, or where the parents have to work too many jobs just to keep food on the table to be able to be engaged in their children's lives.
Now, to be clear, I'm not saying "everyone has exactly the same potential in all areas." There are enough natural physiological and neurological variations to ensure that, for instance, I'm better at foreign languages and programming, while my wife is better at research, art, and people management.
But I know enough about the psychology of motivation and mindset (eg, entity vs growth mindset) to know that the things we believe about ourselves and the world greatly color what we are able to do and become—so if we are able to change our mindset from, for instance, "I'm just bad at math" to "I was never taught math in a way that engaged me; I can get better if I want to", then we can achieve things that previously seemed impossible. That's triply true for getting ourselves out of situations (like crushing poverty) that restrict our mindset and our abilities.