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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5896 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do you think IQ measures anything of meaning?

I think it's positively correlated with things like conscientiousness and academic inclination, but I don't think it actually measures the thing that IQ fetishists like to believe that it measures, IE genuine intelligence or competency. It's Ironic that you should bring up Bryan Caplan because in my view he is perhaps one of the quintessential examples of someone who is academically accomplished, and clearly has a very high IQ, while simultaneously being a fucking moron.

As for how smart I think the average African is, I'd say they're on par with the average used car salesman here in the states and while some might see that as a "diss" that's whole lot smarter than a lot of folks here, especially the gay autistic Bay Area crowd, give them credit for. Fact is that I've met more idiots with prestigious degrees, than I've met idiots in living Africa or working in sales. My theory regarding the mechanism is that societies and trades with less wealth and narrower margins don't have the luxury of tolerating incompetence and/or free riders to the degree that academia does.

Your average car salesman can sort alphabetically.

It appears you use 'intelligence' is sense 'personality which I like'. This is not a useful meaning.

So can the average African, and I could just easily accuse you and the rest of the rat-sphere pf doing the same. Equating Intelligence with nueroticism and holding blue-tribe values rather than ability to think

So can the average African,

Source? Do you think Scott just badmouthed Haitians when wrote they had problem with numerical sorting?

I could just easily accuse you and the rest of the rat-sphere pf doing the same.

Based on which posts?

Equating Intelligence with nueroticism and holding blue-tribe values rather than ability to think

You were just provided with a source that IQ has very weak negative correlation in this comment

https://www.themotte.org/post/327/making-cognitive-enhancement-palatable/56895?context=8#context

and now you repeat this...

Does it tell something to you if a right-winger (are pro-HBD more likely to be right-wing?) says that intelligence correlates with blue-tribe values (which is weak, anyway; I'm lazy, no source)

You are a military man. Does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000 tell something to you? Isn't it a real-life experiment confirming vailidity of IQ?

My source is 2 years spent living in East Africa back when I was still working as a contractor for a humanitarian NGO. While I don't want to bad-mouth Scott, I do think he's a very much "on the spectrum", and thus not a reliable source when it comes to this sort of thing. More pointedly, I'm not convinced that he can tell the difference between "mentally incapable" and "can not be bothered".

can tell the difference between "mentally incapable" and "can not be bothered".

Well wouldn't the latter imply it's difficult to them? Maybe as difficult as for us installing AOSP on their cellphone.

If your usage of intelligence is not tied to personality, does this mean you can tell that many intelligent people exist who are intraverted/whose personalities you dislike and if counted on population level, the correlation be near zero (say, -0.1). Which IQ fetishists can demonstrate. Can you?

Well wouldn't the latter imply it's difficult to them?

I don't see why it would.

As for my usage of intelligence, my usage is essentially the ability to recognize and integrate new information "on the fly" and change one's approach accordingly, which while it is something can be assessed and tested for, it is quite distinct from "IQ". The fundamental mistake that the IQ fetishists (including Scott) tend to make is believing that the ability to mimic the functionality of a pocket calculator is the same as thing as being able to solve a problem.

I don't see why it would.

What would principle of parsimony suggest?

my usage is essentially the ability to recognize and integrate new information "on the fly" and change one's approach accordingly, which while it is something can be assessed and tested for, it is quite distinct from "IQ".

I can't infer from these word how would it be from practice. So I ask you for examples of people who you consider to to be intelligent that are 1. intraverted 2. personalities disliked by you. Which you aren't giving.

What would principle of parsimony suggest?

What makes you think that the question of "parsimony" has more to do with anything than the question of whether or not to "humor the fucking Gringo?"

I can't infer from these word how would it be from practice

It's simple really, how many languages do you speak? how readily can you context shift? can you actually respond to arguments (ie create an accurate model of your opponent) or are you just doing a bad impression of chatgpt?

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