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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 12, 2023

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The median east African has a room temperature IQ.

The median east African is more intelligent than most posters here on TheMotte.org including myself.

Hlynka confusing extroversion with intelligence once again.

Africans do pretty poor on real-life tasks "realizing witchcraft isn't real" and "whether having sex with virgin cures you of AIDS".

You're a military man. So tell me why McNamara's moron corps were bad at real-life tasks they were assigned, and damaging to other units' morale even though all what they were different is just worse result on paper-and-pencil test?

number of languages spoken

Do you believe if we compelled children to learn multiple languages at gunpoint they'd be any smarter? Compelling vaccinating children makes them healthier, at least for most vaccines.

Hlynka confusing extroversion with intelligence once again.

@aardvark2 making the "uncharitable" straw-man flesh again.

Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?

Likewise, if you know many military men you know that the name McNamara is a dirty word. There's a reason that his is one of the only red headstones in Arlington.

I'd be curious to hear why Captain DeJearnette deserves similar disdain for having a red headstone. Unless both of them simply paid extra for a custom piece.

I don't know the story behind Captain DeJearnette, but the legend is that McNamara's headstone is red for all the Americans his incompetence killed.

Likewise, if you know many military men you know that the name McNamara is a dirty word. There's a reason that his is one of the only red headstones in Arlington.

Wouldn't that suggest that people who think IQ measures something real and useful in real life might have a point? Guy comes up with idea of lowering the threshold on a mental aptitude test to fill a manpower shortage, and now his name is considered cursed for generations. This sure seems consistent with mental aptitude tests mattering in real life.

No.

If anything Robert McNamara illustrates my point that it is possible for someone with a high iq to be a complete moron.

I've been lurking this community since the /r/slatestarcodex days and I've finally registered for the first time just to say that this is absolutely the worst kind of post.

You've been presented with a massive ironclad statistically significant block of data on the relationship between those silly irrelevant IQ tests and real-world competence, and it utterly refutes your position on the subject.

And what's your response to this? A pithy joke, about how McNamara was a high IQ moron, and for what? Disregarding the value of standardized IQ testing? Kind of giving up the game, aren't you?

You would have been right behind McNamara talking about how his morons had hustle and moxy and what do those eggheads know with their tests anyway?

There's absolutely no reason anyone should take you seriously as a poster after posts like this. In any case I'm relurking, enjoy your ongoing career as Libertarian Darwin for as long as the moderators continue letting you rack up infinite temp bans.

Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?

I think I am better at picking up real life tasks than other people. For example, I am a better cook than most other cooks. I am a better gardener and landscaper than most of the people who do it professionally. I was a top tier football referee for a while. I learned how to be a glazier to exceed lifelong employees in a summer. I am top 10% at my actual paper job.

This IQ thing seems to translate pretty well for me.

Can you list some examples of real-life tasks?

Do you really think rationalists are any better at "real-life tasks"?

I think intelligent people are generally better at real-life tasks than unintelligent ones.

I think intelligent people are generally better at real-life tasks than unintelligent ones.

I would agree but I'm also the one who is explicitly questioning the premise that IQ = intelligence. The thing about being in the military is that you get exposed to both ends of the spectrum.

It would help, you know, if you defined intelligence in not sense "personality which I like", which is not very useful.

About cab drivers, there's a quote alleged to Mitterand "it is very unfortunate thing that people who know most about how to govern, are already employed as hairdressers and taxi drivers".

And the people who can't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel are pretty fucking useless, right? And they'd score badly on an IQ test, too. Yes, there are pitfalls high-IQ people can fall into that low-IQ people never will. That's largely because they'll never get far enough to fall into that pitfall; for a physical analogy if you can't climb the rock wall in your local gym you're never going to fall from halfway up a mountain. But there's a lot of people in the motte who take pride in their high IQ and by claiming that doesn't mean anything you get to piss on them, so all is good, right?

Hlynka confusing extroversion with intelligence once again.

The extroverts are the people that you'll interact with when you go to east Africa, so there's some selection bias.

The Africans are higher in extroversion than Europeans, esp Northern ones. (~Americans)