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OP claimed that many people here quietly believe that IQ determines moral worth.
I disagree. I think people who believe that IQ determines moral worth are a fairly small if strident minority here.
@Lepidus is registering that he believes that IQ does determine moral worth, and I am inviting him to make his case.
I think your view, which I agree with, is actually the majority here, though that fact is less evident than it might otherwise be because a lot of the long-timers here are tired of taking the bait on conversations that tend to be repetitive, uninteresting, and unproductive.
can we have a poll on this?
You know >I am inviting him to make his case.
would help to to determine opinions of majority here and minority here.
We have rules against such things for a reason(consensus building). What use would this information be to you? Do you think popularity of a belief that does seem to be pretty contested is really that important? I'll register as someone on the HBD side who thinks that intelligence is not very strongly correlated with moral worth but frankly it's a question that hinges mostly on framing and very little on the kind of thing that makes interesting arguments. Most of what you tend to get and are indeed getting here are people arguing part eachother with totally different definitions of moral and worth and intelligence.
I think many people think that intelligence is incredibly valuable and value raising it in a population as a moral aim. Or it is at least trivially instrumental to moral aims as a more intelligence population alleviates more suffering, produces and experiences better art and is able to develop more wisely. whether we can assign morality to intellectual failings is another questions, that I personally answer no to because to me morality implies some kind of choice and people do not choose to be dumb. And talk of raising a population's intelligence can but does not have to imply some pretty horrible practices of the past which definitely is poisoning the conversation, "We think you have equal moral weight to smarter people but would prefer you not reproduce" is both unconvincing to the people being cleansed from the gene pool and often put much less kindly.
There are many twists and turns in this debate but as @fcfromssc said, they rarely change and people stuck in the twists and turns rare change each other's minds even when they basically agree on everything but definitions.
Well, Scott at least does 1 big poll each year. Is it wrong? I understand why it'd be bad if every motte poster would create one here, but polls provide infortmation supplementary to postings.
and I am also interesting in opinions of people other than those two create long effortposts. A poster being rare poster doesn't mean they don't have strong opinions.
I think we've done wide polls before which I wouldn't be against but I kind of oppose having positions in it. If for no other reason than the behavior of "Well 74% of us believe this so why do you think you're smarter than us all" Which is egregiously obnoxious. As well as the simple act of registering a position might make people less willing to deviate from their previous position.
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