When I was young, I had a high school biology teacher tell the class that natural selection continued to operate on human intelligence. I found this comment surprising because even as a teenager (and even before) I was well aware that IQ experts had long warned that low IQ people were out-breeding high IQ people and that this would have a dysgenic effect. But I had great respect for this biology teacher because the year before he was my chemistry teacher and provided me with a paradigm shifting definition of intelligence, so I waited for the other students to leave and asked him what the hell he meant.
He went on to explain that while people might be getting genetically dumber in First World countries, the overall species was getting smarter because in some Third World countries, even though the birth rates were incredibly high, the death rates were even higher, and eventually the populations of First World countries would exceed the populations of Third World countries.
It was an argument many people would consider racist and evil; and yet, liberal icon Charles Darwin said much the same:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [that is, the ones which allegedly look like people] … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian [Aboriginal] and the gorilla
And then comedienne Joan Rivers said something similar.
All of these comments are very hurtful to my readers, but nature is “evil”. Humans are part of nature and are “evil” too. So when animals and humans have intelligence, natural selection means the smart will prey on the less smart. Survival of the fittest.
According to scientist Richard Lynn, the least intelligent races are the bushmen and the pygmies. Bushmen are arguably the first people to branch off the human evolutionary tree; a population that emerged before the invention of the vowel. Is it a coincidence that their population has tragically sunk so low that they risk going extinct? Intelligence is the mental ability to adapt. I’m sure I have some despicable evil sociopathic readers who couldn’t care less if the bushmen go extinct, but if it can happen to them, it can eventually happen to your people too.
No one can predict the future, but if HBD turns out to be scientifically correct, one especially dark scenario is that high IQ races and high IQ ethnic groups are slowly going to replace lower IQ populations through competition for resources, climate change, war, interracial gang violence, geopolitical strategizing, and cultural manipulation. The lower IQ ethnic groups will likely go extinct first, followed by higher IQ ethnic groups, until only the absolute highest IQ ethnic groups are left, and they’ll have to compete for what’s left of the planet.
If this happens, my great great grand-kids and the great great grand-kids of most of my readers will sadly not be among the survivors.
Lol…Bushmen don’t live in huge concentrated populations and Bushmen were run off certain patches of land. Their dwindling numbers have little, if anything, to do with nature in the real sense of the word.
Intelligence is the mental ability to understand. Nothing more or less.
‘if HBD turns out to be scientifically correct, one especially dark scenario is that high IQ races and high IQ ethnic groups are slowly going to replace lower IQ populations through’
Yeah like those high IQ Romans, Egyptians, etc. replaced all of the lower IQ populations. If you want to take this back to evo-psych psychobabble, then men with the most resources get all the babes. Resources != highly correl with smarts in society. If you want to take it another way, men who are good-looking, tall, and fit will get the most babes — dumb, smart, it really doesn’t matter.
A more fun, less speculative post would be ‘Does High IQ make Crime Pay?’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gugasian
wow..i wonder what ever happened to the money he got. Would be ironic if he deposited in a bank
Who knows? However, a lot of law enforcement does depend on criminals being dumb. For this reason, it’s hard to differentiate between so-called ‘morality’ of high IQ individuals and low IQ individuals. Low IQ individuals are just caught far more often.
Police are around normal IQ — 100-105. Detectives maybe a little higher ~ 110-ish if we’re being optimistic (they are pulled from the police population).
Notice how he rationalized it as a victimless crime?
He tried his best not to harm innocents
And he robbed banks because the fed would just print more money to pay the people back.
If anything you could say he was more moral than the average low own thief whose thought process was just “get money to buy drugs fuck everybody else
Yes, as I have said earlier, his likely above average intellect enabled him to rationalize away his guilt. That’s not an indicator of better morals, per se.
He didn’t harm innocents because, quite simply, the less fuss you cause, the less likely you are to be caught. It was a smart decision.
So I’m still just standing by ‘he was smarter than the average bear.’
i would “coddle” some economic criminals. the problem isn’t just criminals it’s a system where crime is the best or most tolerable option for so many people.
why is the white incarceration rate > 4x the incarceration rate for any western European country? is it just longer sentences?
but chi-mos, rapists, murderers, etc. throw a way the key I say.
Oh yes. I know a policeman and when I’m with him for more than a few minutes I’m invariably reminded that a life of crime is always a fall back. That said, once a person moves into the realm of bank robbery, they are put up against more than the typical officer or gumshoe, the FBI has (marginally) smarter folks on hand and more tools in their kit. I think Gugasian let himself be seduced by the popular glorification of bank robbery. Seems to me, invading the homes of the ultra wealthy would be higher reward to risk.
The FBI is likely way smarter, on average, than local police. An applicant for special agent must complete a four-year degree and obtain a few years experience in the relevant field. So smart enough to graduate and gain experience.
The same seems true of government generally. At the tip-top of private industry, maybe the individuals are smarter, but on average, government employees are probably smarter than their private population counter-parts.
For example: “An associate of mine was contracted to do intelligence testing on a sampling of postal workers. We are all aware that these workers are the butt of endless jokes and real life horror stories, yet intelligence testing found them to be significantly smarter than the public as a whole. His testing found significant numbers of individuals at a Ph.D. level of intelligence and, in fact, many postal workers found time to do their jobs and study for advanced degrees.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2011/05/27/why-your-postman-may-be-smarter-than-he-looks/
Government workers demonstrate intelligence by adapting the situation to their advantage. They make a lot of money for the amount of work they do & some (like postmen) get exercise in the process
They demonstrate ‘intelligence’ by meeting all of the pre-requisites for their respective positions. Getting a cushy job with nice benefits != adapting the situation to your advantage. An individual who convinced a committee or interviewer to lower his or her standards in order to accept said individual would be ‘adapting the situation to his advantage.’
@swanknasty
On the intelligence of government workers…..
There are 2 ways to become a government worker
There are open exam positions
There are open competitive positions
For open exam positions whoever scores the HIGHEST gets the job. Typically for every position you might have 100+ test takers for that position. This explains the high iq scores for postal workers since most positions do not require special experience and the only requirements are test scores.
On the other hand for open competitive applicants are assigned points according to a system.
You get points for having a degree, and more points For having a relevant degree and more points for having a advanced degree.
So for example let’s take a technical project manager position here’s an example of the points awarded
Ba degree = 1 point
Bs degree = 2 points
Management economics math science degree= 3 points
Engineering degree = 5 points
Masters = 2 points
MBA = 3 points
Masters of engineering = 5 points
So ideally they want a engineering degree.
Someone with a masters in engineering would get 10 points
While the person with the Bs in engineering would get 6
The person with a MBA with economics undergrad would get 6.
You also have a system that assigns points based on GPA, work experience, veteran status, minority status.
This system tends to get DUMBER THAN AVERAGE employees because under this system
A guy with a 3.0 with a MIT undergrad would lose the position to a 4.0 community college grad.
Because the community grad will have more points due to higher GPA.
If you look at govt workers you will see that most of the employees come from really crappy universities.
‘If you look at govt workers you will see that most of the employees come from really crappy universities.’
If you looked at their private sector COUNTER-PARTS, they would be dumber on average. Government attorneys and experts tend to have better credentials on average than the general ‘attorney/expert’ population.
Swank,
By adapting the situation to your advantage i simply mean changing your situation so that it’s to your advantage. Sometimes that’s seeing an opportunity & figuring out what’s required to exploit it & then having the ability to exploit it .
Now you need to adapt this situation to your advantage by understanding which arguments are substantive, interesting & worth your time & which ones are tedious hair splitting that bore your readers to tears. Not all battles are worth going to war over.
‘By adapting the situation to your advantage i simply mean changing your situation so that it’s to your advantage. Sometimes that’s seeing an opportunity & figuring out what’s required to exploit it & then having the ability to exploit it .’
Point blank it’s a very unclear way to put whatever it is you mean.
‘Now you need to adapt this situation to your advantage by understanding which arguments are substantive, interesting & worth your time & which ones are tedious hair splitting that bore your readers to tears’
According to who, you? Many discussions aren’t really hair splitting, they are real differences that you just don’t want to discuss or go into with any rigor. Instead, you’d rather use vague terms vaguely. For example, you saying ‘guilt’ is somehow a separate emotion that sometimes ‘just can’t be rationalized away’ by resolving or solving a moral system a priori makes no sense. Guilt is an emotion that is inextricably tied to a moral system of one kind or another. You view that as ‘splitting hairs.’ it isn’t, it’s an important point.
And rather than take the time to view your definition, or adapt it to better reflect reality, or to better capture concept A or B, you stubbornly refuse to do so, which makes it seem like you really aren’t interested in what’s true or not.
Wrong
Unless you are talking about political positions.
The average public defender and prosecutor do not have top degrees.
I do not know much about how gov lawyers are hired, but anecdotal experience is that the lawyers from Harvard and Yale either become politicians or if they do choose to practice law they go into private law firms. If they do go for govt positions they only go for the top level ones.
I am familiar with the Stem hiring for the government and you won’t find mit, caltech,Georgia tech, Harvey mudd,rit, Purdue, Stanford berkley Penn grads in government positions that aren’t aerospace related. These guys are working in silicon valley majority of the engineers in places like the mta come from garbage schools.
The bottomline is that why would top minds work for the gov when they could get 140k starting at google while doing more interesting work.
Why would they try to compete with veterans and minorities with high gpas from crap schools that give them an insurmountable point advantage. While screwing them over in benefits.
The point system was created to prevent lawsuits and cries of hiring bias.
indeed and it’s always been the case for civil servants and everywhere, not just in the US. some of them may work sinecures, but there are sinecures in the private sector too.
one of my company’s former salesmen had a cushy account and all he did was drink coffee most of the time.
but at the same time the average business executive is smarter than the average govt employee. is the average business executive smarter than his counterpart in govt? sometimes and sometimes not. it depends on the business and the agency.
‘The average public defender and prosecutor do not have top degrees.’
They don’t need to. Please compare the average public defender and public prosecutor to your average criminal defense attorney — the guys who do DUIs, etc. On average, public defenders are smarter/have better credentials/perform better.
You can observe the difference by observing public defenders versus court-appointed lawyers. Court-appointed lawyers actually do worse than the public defenders. Private attorneys — read: attorneys who certain criminal clients can afford to pay for on their own — also don’t do any better than public defenders, and that’s an elite group within average criminal defense attorneys.
‘The bottomline is that why would top minds work for the gov when they could get 140k starting at google while doing more interesting work.’
Because the government is stable and permanent. It’s also much larger than ‘Google.’ And the ‘more interesting work’ bit is just your opinion. There’s plenty of ‘interesting work’ done within the government.
Swank
i thought your point about guilt was very good but unfortunately it was drowned out by a lot of tedious hair splitting about which definition of adapt i was using.
Instead you need to understand that words have many meanings & adapt to the definition i was using since i was the person you were talking to
I am interested in truth but I’m not interested in arguing for the sake of arguing
You’re a smart person BUT a huge part of intelligence is the ability to self-monitor. You have a finite amount of time to capture your reader’s attention so you need to decide what your main point is & not get distracted
‘Instead you need to understand that words have many meanings & adapt to the definition i was using since i was the person you were talking to’
Yes, but the problem — and I already mentioned this — comes when discussing scientific things (evolution) while using scientific terms (adaptation) but attaching their colloquial senses. In fact, IIRC a review of Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance put it as trying to cloak ordinary speculation with the credibility of science.
Swank,
My definition of adaptive behaviour is behaviour that advances your goals. The scientific definition of adaptive behaviour is behaviour that advances your genes
The two definitions are related because evolution predisposed us to pursue goals that advance our genes (survival, tribalism, sex etc) but one can still display goal directed adaptive behaviour even if the goals one pursues are maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective
There’s just such a wide swath of behavior that falls in the ‘advancing your goals but evolutionarily maladaptive’ category, which makes referring to that behavior as adaptive very confusing.
Using ‘ability to understand’ instead avoids this type of problem. Understanding what it takes to survive and reproduce in an environment covers what we’re talking about.
Computer programs can malfunction, and so can the human brain. “‘advancing your goals but evolutionarily maladaptive’” is a sort of malfunction. A malfunctioning program can still be more functional than a useless program.
Rockall, it’s malfunctioning in the sense that it causes one to use ones intelligence for purposes other than what it evolved for. Using birth control is maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective but it’s highly adaptive if your goal is to not have children. Humans are smart enough to have our own goals that conflict with what we evolved to do
Analogously humans might one day invent robots for the purpose of serving us, but that get so smart they end up killing us.
Intelligence is only as good as the goal it’s adapting to.
“Humans are smart enough to have our own goals that conflict with what we evolved to do”
Our own goals are precisely those old goals that we share with other animals. Other goals are deluded dead ends, unless they further the real goal is some roundabout way.
Rockall that’s only true on balance. If we isolate the specific program feature, however, it’s either functioning or it is malfunctioning.
And the birth control issue under this paradigm is being framed incorrectly. Birth control is used to allow individuals to acquire more resources before having children, hence increasing the chance of those children reproducing/surviving.
Stretching adaptation to include all subjective good for the individual leads to the term becoming meaningless in scientific discussion or speculation.
And this willingness to stretch the term itself seems to stem from a relativistic belief regarding value in general.
Evolution and terms related to it all have objective parameters: survival and replication.
Swanknasty
survival and replication, or in fact only replication since survival is means to achieve replication. To survive and help others, in particular with similar genetics, is a way of securing replication. Gays can do it too. If you have as your goal waste as little rainforest as possible, that is also rooted in a species survival instinct, though a bit derailed, or we’ll know in the end. And you are right of course, subjective valuations only lead to endless and pointless discussions.
And the birth control issue under this paradigm is being framed incorrectly. Birth control is used to allow individuals to acquire more resources before having children, hence increasing the chance of those children reproducing/surviving.
But the end result is that intelligent people end up having fewer surviving children on average, hence dysgenics. Their behavior is adaptive from the perspective of their goals (have sex without the burden of children) but in an environment where such a goal is trivially easy to achieve, the goal itself is maladaptive from an evolutionary perspective.
Stretching adaptation to include all subjective good for the individual leads to the term becoming meaningless in scientific discussion or speculation.
It’s not so much that I’m stretching the term, but rather I’m dividing it into two components: 1) intelligence is the mental ability to adapt to our goals, and 2) our goals are adapted to advancing our genes
Both 1) and 2) have to be functioning properly for the behavior to be adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. I’m simply saying that intelligent people still behave adaptively from the perspective of their goals even if their goals hurt their genetic fitness. There’s nothing inherently intelligent or correct about advancing our genetic interests, that just happens to be the goal most of us are motivated to pursue because if we weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.
Behavior can be adaptive for the individual while being maladaptive for the individual’s genes. Fortunately, individual interests and genetic interests have been highly correlated for most of our evolutionary history, allowing intelligence to be selected for.
@pumpkin
I think you should change your definition of intelligence from ability to adapt to the ability to create and manipulate information.
Under your current definition Cockaroaches and space bears would be considered intelligent
I think you should change your definition of intelligence from ability to adapt to the ability to create and manipulate information.
You could define intelligence as the ability to create and manipulate information, but create and manipulate it for what purpose? To adapt to whatever goal we have. So ultimately it comes down to the same definition
Under your current definition Cockaroaches and space bears would be considered intelligent
Cochroaches are well adapted but they don’t display the “mental ability” to adapt, nor do they display “adaptive behavior”. They are PHYSICALLY adapted.
‘But the end result is that intelligent people end up having fewer surviving children on average, hence dysgenics.’
And the infant mortality rate among those who are smart enough to use contraceptives is also lower. The groups with the higher birthrates also have higher infant mortality rates. So, it isn’t necessarily ‘dysgenic,’ it’s actually a smart strategy to ensure that what children one does have, survive. AFAIK, while the birthrate for minorities is higher, the infant mortality rate is actually far higher. Latinas are an exception to this, but that’s likely because latin culture is very ‘extended-family-for-support’ oriented, unlike the modern, white-nuclear-family-sole-support.
‘ I’m simply saying that intelligent people still behave adaptively from the perspective of their goals even if their goals hurt their genetic fitness.’
I know what you are saying. You are using the colloquial meaning in a way that is at plain odds with the word’s scientific meaning, within the context of a scientific discussion.
‘Behavior can be adaptive for the individual while being maladaptive for the individual’s genes’
Not if we’re discussing evolution, framing these issues in an evolutionary context, or trying to even connect these concepts to evolution.
And the infant mortality rate among those who are smart enough to use contraceptives is also lower.
Smart people still have fewer surviving children in many countries
I know what you are saying. You are using the colloquial meaning in a way that is at plain odds with the word’s scientific meaning, within the context of a scientific discussion.
It’s not at odds; it’s complementary. Again, the scientific definition of adaptive behaviour is behaviour that advances your genes. In order for the behaviour to advance your genes, you must adapt to your goals & your goals must be adapted to your genetic interests. So just think of my definition as a sub-definition within the scientific definition. Think of intelligence as the cognitive part of adaptability.
You’re obsessing over the word “adapt”. It’s just a word. I realize it’s confusing but i like it anyway. All I’m saying is intelligence is the mental abilities required to reach your goals.
This “simply saying that intelligent people still behave adaptively from the perspective of their goals even if their goals hurt their genetic fitness,” is plainly at odds with the definition of adaptive. You are saying it is adaptive (colloquially) and not adaptive (scientifically) at the same time.
‘It’s just a word’
Sure, but statements like the above obfuscate, rather than clarify, any underlying concept that may be present.
This “simply saying that intelligent people still behave adaptively from the perspective of their goals even if their goals hurt their genetic fitness,” is plainly at odds with the definition of adaptive. You are saying it is adaptive (colloquially) and not adaptive (scientifically) at the same time.
But I’m also plainly saying that’s the exception, not the rule. Through the vast majority of human evolutionary history, intelligence was adaptive in the scientific sense which is why brain size tripled in just 4 million years. Even today, intelligence correlates with life span and money (a metaphor for survival ) even if it no longer correlates with reproductive success (since reproductive success is no longer linked to survival).
Sure, but statements like the above obfuscate, rather than clarify, any underlying concept that may be present.
It does obfuscate, but one reason why intelligence is such a powerful evolutionary adaptation is precisely because intelligence was adaptive in both senses of the word. To me that’s worth emphasizing.
“our goals are adapted to advancing our genes”
LOL. Please read The Selfish Gene if you haven’t done so already.
LOL. Please read The Selfish Gene if you haven’t done so already.
I haven’t read it but I understand his theory. Your comment suggests that you don’t.
Our genes are the causes for our goals. We go to college to attain an education for money and hopefully attract a mate, why? To reproduce. The GENE is the driver, the ‘adapting intelligence’ is is not necessarily the driver, the gene is. Our genes, our selfish genes, have us do these things. Dawkins proved something that people would have a hard time admitting: we’re just bags of meat replicating our genes without a care for anything else.
You’re talking about intelligence itself as the main driver of ability to be able to adapt to novel circumstances, correct me if I’m wrong.
So how intelligent are the ultra small organisms that ‘adapt’ to their surroundings. Here’s my argument.
P1: Intelligence is *not* the “ability to adapt” because non-intelligent life ‘adapts’ to their surroundings as well, if not better, than humans do.
P2: If intelligence were the ability to adapt, only intelligent organisms would be around.
P3: Intelligent organisms are not the only organisms around.
Therefore, intelligence is not the ability to adapt.
Our genes are the causes for our goals. We go to college to attain an education for money and hopefully attract a mate, why? To reproduce. The GENE is the driver, the ‘adapting intelligence’ is is not necessarily the driver, the gene is. Our genes, our selfish genes, have us do these things. Dawkins proved something that people would have a hard time admitting: we’re just bags of meat replicating our genes without a care for anything else.
I agree 100%
You’re talking about intelligence itself as the main driver of ability to be able to adapt to novel circumstances, correct me if I’m wrong.
I define intelligence as just the mental abilities that adapt our behavior to reach our goals. But our goals are determined by feelings and desires which evolved to advance our genetic interests. Of course when the environment changes, goals that advanced our genes in the past (such as having sex) no longer do so if you’re smart enough to use birth control. That’s an example of intelligence adapting to one’s INDIVIDUAL goals at the expense of his genetic goals. But over time, individuals goals evolve to serve genetic goals, but birth control happened so recently, there’s been not enough time for evolution to catch up.
P1: Intelligence is *not* the “ability to adapt” because non-intelligent life ‘adapts’ to their surroundings as well, if not better, than humans do.
Non-intelligent life is often adaptED to its environment, but being adaptED is different from adaptING. Humans CHANGE at the individual level in response to environmental change, but non-intelligent life is much more static and repetitive.
Further, when I say intelligence is the ability to adapt, I really mean it’s the MENTAL ability to adapt behaviour to our advantage: goal directed behavioral plasticity. In theory a non-intelligent animal could be more adaptable than us, if they adapted through physical plasticity, but so far I haven’t seen evidence of any non-intelligent animal out-adapting us on any level, within a single generation
The influx of NAMS would seem to suggest opposite is happening in America and much of Europe. High IQ races are too emasculated to fight back, let alone conquer the low IQ races
It takes a strong concerted/collective effort to rid of individuals who don’t fit the majority agenda.
Think of Spain’s Inquisition and Germany’s Nazis!
The only difference is that the Muslims and Jews in the past were much more useful than the low IQ NAMs that occupy much of America and parts of Europe today.
There would have to be some sort of environmental shock that would favor the survival of high-IQ people
It doesn’t need to favor survival. If high iq are breeding more than low iq with equal survival rate the population will gradually become high iq
His high-school teacher believes that high iq Africans are breeding more than low iq and that the high iq children Are more likely to reproduce.
Unfortunately research on Africa shows that it is mostly the poor uneducated and heavily religious that are breeding the most due to refusing to use contraceptives.
Canadians are the dumbest white people in the world.
The Canadians who cross over the border are dumber.
Captain Kirk should have stayed in his hometown of Montreal and learned French. Perhaps he didn’t bother, so Hollywood was a better place for him.
“To boldly go where stupid men have gone before”!
Search in google a article by Linda silverman The Moral Sensitivity of gifted children and the evolution of society” .
Bushmen seems to be the fittest of their tribe. The fittest in our “western” societies are, many them, by sociopaths. Entropy and not harmony as Linda say.
Competition do not correlate organically with meritocracy because you can to do something positive even without competition.
Real evolution as i already think and this article show again, is a search to harmony of elements.
Your definition of “natural” is deterministic and incomplete. Violence is a stage, like mistakes. We supposedly need feel pain to understand what is it. The goal of violence is learning to no more practized it without any decent imperative.
I agree that most of “natural” world is violent and unfair, but as i said before, many species commit violence in psychopathic level.
Grrrrrrrr… Correction: “…many species DON’T commit violence in a psychopathic levels. “
Real smart people know that non-recreative or dangerous ( barbarian-like) competition is a prole thing.
Pp is right in a resource bottlenecked, zero sum world. This was the case in Australia, Taiwan, and north America where higher iq ethnic groups wiped out the lower iq ethnic groups. However, even then these guys could only drive low iq nomads to extinction, not low iq farming societies.
pp is wrong because we are no longer in zero sum world when it comes to having many kids or reaching reproductive age.
Pp is right about cultural imperialism. The low iq Indonesians use the Dutch alphabet and low iq Indians and Africans substitute English words for many everyday things. Everything else like interracial gang wars is bs.
It is still operating, out of the bottom half it is the top half that’s reproducing, pushing up the average. While the average offspring of the succeeding generation is born to parents from the lower half, the pressure is at work at the lower end, not the upper.
Hello pumpkin personne i think you blog is the liste interresting on the subjective
I would know how old are you, what is job and qualifications ?
Subject*
Generally, the main factor that sustains higher fertility is poverty exacerbated by religious norms among the poor only.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijpr/2014/486079/
Your high-school biology teacher is wrong.
The people reproducing the most in Africa are the dumbs that are too lazy to use condoms. The smart Africans that don’t get killed off immigrate to developed countries and thus don’t get crazy fertility rates.
So what is the endgame?
Western style developed countries get dumber and the trend increasingly speeds up since more dumb people equals more dumb babies which equals more dumb people.
Africa and third world gets even dumber until the west stops sending condoms.
East Asian countries remain the same unless they somehow start accepting third worlders
I don’t think my biology teacher was implying that intelligence was being selected within the Third World; rather he was predicting that because the death rates are sometimes even higher than the birth rates, the Third World would become a diminished percentage of the entire World, thus the average intelligence of the entire world genetically increase
”why is the white incarceration rate > 4x the incarceration rate for any western European country? is it just longer sentences?”
You said one time that ”white americans are not the same than europeans, then -white- is a simplistic term”.
it’s operating and has been operating…in favor of the less intelligent.
Greek for sheep is probaton, so there has been a probatization and amoraliztion of man, first with agriculture then with industrialization.
very recently i’ve had the opportunity to put the adaptability jive to the test. and it was a weighty
matter with money on the line.
i knew what i had to do to get what i wanted, but at the same time thought it immoral. i did what very few people would do, and perhaps none have done before me in this particular situation.
i said what i really thought. i refused to be obedient and slavish. i refused to respect authority.
Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods.
i think it does happen that people “adapt”. they go along to get along. most of the time it’s because they’re stupid or evil, but sometimes they’re not and eats at them until as John Cleese said:
If I had not gone into Monty Python, I probably would have stuck to my original plan to graduate and become a chartered accountant, perhaps a barrister lawyer, and gotten a nice house in the suburbs, with a nice wife and kids, and gotten a country club membership, and then I would have killed myself.
i knew what i had to do to get what i wanted, but at the same time thought it immoral. i did what very few people would do, and perhaps none have done before me in this particular situation.
Most people only need to adapt to their economic survival goals & thus only need to be mildly intelligent to adapt
If you have high morals, then you’re forced to adapt to two goals that are often mutually exclusive: the pursuit of money AND the pursuit of morals
You could fail to reach your goals & still be smarter than more successful people simply because you’re trying to adapt to two goals while they’re trying to adapt to only one.
Dumb maladaptive people can adapt when they have easy goals to adapt to. Smart adaptable people can be maladaptive when their goals exceed their high ability to adapt
The amount of variance in the outcomes of intelligent people alone casts doubt on the definition. If we leave the definition at understanding, then action is irrelevant and the variation makes sense. With the definition we have to assume that many intelligent people are maladaptive in many other ways — too many of them.
The amount of variance in the outcomes of intelligent people alone casts doubt on the definition. If we leave the definition at understanding, then action is irrelevant and the variation makes sense.
Well I do define intelligence as the mental ability to adapt. Having an ability needn’t imply an action behavior, it sometimes only implies, as you say, an understanding. However, if we define “adapt” as adapting to our goals, then it’s inevitable that the ability will directly translate to action because all conscious behavior is motivated by goals. However if (as you prefer) we define “adapt” as “advance our genetic interests”, then you could make a distinction between ability and behavior, but then it becomes a very strange way of defining intelligence that has little to do with how the term is understood in ordinary language.
With the definition we have to assume that many intelligent people are maladaptive in many other ways — too many of them.
Well most of us are no longer living in a “survival of the fittest” type environment where intelligence evolved in the first place. The most genetically fit people today are those who have a lot of sex, but have very little survival value. Thus it’s not at all surprising to find intelligent people have become maladaptive at the genetic level, even though they’re still adaptive at the individual level. The two have simply lost their correlation or the correlation has become negative.
‘Well I do define intelligence as the mental ability to adapt. ‘
Adapt is a verb, pumpkin. So if you are talking about an ability to act, in one way or another. It necessarily implies an ‘action’ behavior.
‘but then it becomes a very strange way of defining intelligence ‘
That’s just your opinion. My definition tracks the word’s actual scientific meaning. And the ability to understand would be in agreement with most of what people think about intelligence.
‘The most genetically fit people today are those who have a lot of sex, but have very little survival value’
Just your opinion, again. When you fetishisize IQ, it’s easy to believe that ‘IQ is what determines survival value.’ That is untrue again, by the word’s definition. The men with the most survival value are the ones that women will want to sleep with, point blank. The women with the most survival value are the ones men want to sleep with. Like I said, these words you’re throwing around are all evolutionary terms, and they all lead back to the same place: who will have access to the most mates for the longest time. The answer is —> the robustly healthy.
‘ The two have simply lost their correlation or the correlation has become negative’
No, they correlate up to a certain point. Attractive people are, on average, smarter…but not that much smarter. If you want to think of ‘genetically fit’ individuals, think of CEO’s. They tend to be tall, good-looking, and bright. These traits we discuss are useful indicators of fitness so long as they correl with health. Anything after that, and it’s just an aberration that’s probably less important.
Adapt is a verb, pumpkin. So if you are talking about an ability to act, in one way or another. It necessarily implies an ‘action’ behavior.
Huh? Adapt is a verb but adaptability is a noun. People have the ability to perform all kinds of actions they don’t do.
That’s just your opinion. My definition tracks the word’s actual scientific meaning. And the ability to understand would be in agreement with most of what people think about intelligence.
So your definition of intelligence is understanding how to advance your genes? Interesting, but there are problems:
1). One can understand how to do something without having the mental ability to actually do it. For example one can understand that freestyle rap requires rhyming words but that doesn’t mean one can think of the right rhyme at the right time.
2). Most people consider nerds highly intelligent yet nerds often lack an understanding of how to mate prolifically which is important to advancing genes in many environments. Your definition gives social IQ, even sexual IQ, too much weight. I believe intelligent life tends to pass on more genes over millions of years, but that probably has much more to do with the intelligence required to survive than the intelligence required to mate
3) Your definition is meaningless when it comes to artificial intelligence. Robots don’t have genetic interests to advance but they do have “goals” they are programmed to pursue; that’s why I think intelligence is better defined in terms of advancing goals, not genetic goals only.
But if you find my definition of adaptability too abstract, you could improve your definition by saying intelligence is the mental abilities required for survival. The problem with taking the biologist’s definition of adapt too literally is it depends as much on mating success as on survival success while only the latter seems especially related to intelligence as commonly defined.
‘Adapt is a verb but adaptability is a noun. People have the ability to perform all kinds of actions they don’t do.’
Adaptability is a noun that describes the degree to which you can adapt. An individual, under this paradigm, who can’t solve his moral system, point blank does not have the ability to mentally adapt.
Looking at it another way, if you’ve never seen an individual jump before, ever, you wouldn’t say he has the ability to jump. Indeed, you would assess whether he could jump — in the absence of seeing him do so — by those qualities which would enable him to jump — proper musculature, legs, etc. So it is here, you would assess whether the individual in question could understand.
Increasingly, the version of mental ‘ability’ to adapt you’re hinging this discussion on is just longhand for ‘understand’ now, anyway.
Adaptability is a noun that describes the degree to which you can adapt. An individual, under this paradigm, who can’t solve his moral system, point blank does not have the ability to mentally adapt.
He does not have enough mental adaptability to solve his particular problem, but no one has enough mental adaptability to solve every problem.
Looking at it another way, if you’ve never seen an individual jump before, ever, you wouldn’t say he has the ability to jump. Indeed, you would assess whether he could jump — in the absence of seeing him do so — by those qualities which would enable him to jump — proper musculature, legs, etc. So it is here, you would assess whether the individual in question could understand.
If an individual couldn’t jump over a fence, you wouldn’t conclude he lacked the ability to jump unless you could see how high the fence was. The problem with concluding that “maladaptive” people lack adaptability is we can’t see what goals they failed to adapt to. If they failed to adapt to easy goals, then yes we can dismiss them as mentally unadaptable, but if they failed to adapt to impossible goals (desire to lose weight combined with uncontrollable need to constantly eat), then we can’t.
Now you could measure whether a person understands how to adapt, and that pretty much is what many IQ tests do. But from my perspective, measuring whether someone understands how to adapt is largely just observing them adapt under the kind of very controlled, neutral, objective, standardized conditions that seldom exist in real life. In other words, on an IQ test you can see the goals people are trying to adapt to, because they’re clearly and externally defined.
‘He does not have enough mental adaptability to solve his particular problem, but no one has enough mental adaptability to solve every problem. ‘
Yes, so under this paradigm the individual who invents a holy war is more ‘mentally adaptive’ than the person who does not, or i.e. sociopathy = > adaptability, as was said at the start. Regardless, if complex moral systems are nigh impossible to solve, as you say, then those moral systems, as restrictions on adaptability, are maladaptive per se. So, if more intelligent people have more complex moral systems, then being more intelligent is maladaptive.
‘The problem with concluding that “maladaptive” people lack adaptability is we can’t see what goals they failed to adapt to’
It’s a problem created by using a fuzzy version of the word. With the word’s correct sense there are two goals: survival and reproduction. That’s it, that’s all. Did they survive, did they reproduce? Who thrived in the best health, who had the most children? Along that gradient you will find the most and least adapted. Control for other confounds — height, personality, whatever, and you’ll have it for intelligence.
‘that pretty much is what many IQ tests do’
No they do not. IQ tests, under your paradigm, actually measure what you say they do. They aren’t testing your understanding. They are testing understanding + action. That is why, as I also already said, they are indirect measures of intelligence. Zero motivation = low score, no matter the level of understanding.
Yes, so under this paradigm the individual who invents a holy war is more ‘mentally adaptive’ than the person who does not, or i.e. sociopathy = > adaptability, as was said at the start
If telling yourself you’re in a holly war is all it takes to solve one’s moral dilemma, then that problem wasn’t very hard to solve in the first place. So yes such a person had enough mental adaptability to solve the problem, but the problem was easy. Could the same intelligence adapt to a more difficult moral dilemma? Probably not. So he wasn’t especially mentally adaptable, he was just lucky to have a personality that was so easily placated
Regardless, if complex moral systems are nigh impossible to solve, as you say, then those moral systems, as restrictions on adaptability, are maladaptive per se. So, if more intelligent people have more complex moral systems, then being more intelligent is maladaptive.
That’s like saying if big brains/big heads are metabolically expensive, burden the musculoskeletal system, put you at risk for being fatally wounded by an enemy’s club or missile and increase the risk of death during child birth (see Jensen, 1998) and if intelligent people have big brains, then intelligence is maladaptive. In other words, intelligence is indeed maladaptive physically (oversized head) and emotionally (leads to guilt because of increased ethics), but it remains adaptive cognitively. In other words, intelligence may make the problems we have to solve more difficult, but it increases our ability to problem solve. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to juggle two conflicting ideas at the same time.
It’s a problem created by using a fuzzy version of the word. With the word’s correct sense there are two goals: survival and reproduction. That’s it, that’s all. Did they survive, did they reproduce? Who thrived in the best health, who had the most children? Along that gradient you will find the most and least adapted. Control for other confounds — height, personality, whatever, and you’ll have it for intelligence.
Historically, those who had the most surviving offspring were the rich, whether defined by money, or just acquisition of resources, and we do find a correlation between IQ and money.
You’re agreeing with me that if you control for an individual’s goals, the more intelligent, the more adaptive the behavior. You’re just insisting that the goals be limited to survival and reproduction while I’m saying intelligence is the mental ability to advance goals in general. I think the latter is a better way of framing it because you’re essentially defining intelligence as the mental ability to get laid which is a really eccentric definition which I don’t think is accurate scientifically or colloquially. Further, the goals that advance one’s survival and reproduction vary depending on the environment, so it makes more sense to just define intelligence as the mental ability to advance goals in general.
No they do not. IQ tests, under your paradigm, actually measure what you say they do. They aren’t testing your understanding. They are testing understanding + action. That is why, as I also already said, they are indirect measures of intelligence. Zero motivation = low score, no matter the level of understanding.
I agree, but because IQ tests tell you what your goal is (i,e. put this puzzle together) and don’t require too much time or effort, they do a better job controlling for motivation than real life does (since real life goals often require decades of persistent effort). Thus if someone does well in the controlled condition of an IQ test, but does poorly in life, we might conclude that they are mentally adaptable, but are simply defining their goals differently from society or evolution. Because under objective scientific conditions, we’ve already proved they are mentally adaptable.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rnqQhUdXgvI
Swank and Mugabe, what think you of the evidence that social dominance is heritable and genetic? http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154614000163
I think it once again vindicates the HBD world view
Dominance isn’t a trait, dominance is a social relationship. To even say such a thing as ‘dominance is heritable,’ is to betray a casual regard of anything scientific. Anyway, what you mean to say is that traits we believe lead to social dominance are significantly heritable. Some of them are, like height and appearance. Some of them aren’t, like any of the many personality traits that contribute to social dominance.
And then there are different types of ‘dominance.’ Prestige is an alternate route to the same result that one achieves through dominance. Prestige comes from excellence in a certain valuable skill. And because we know that excellence in a given skill has only limited ‘IQ’ explanation —- probably around 25% — there must be significant, non-heritable factors at play.
http://ubc-emotionlab.ca/wp-content/files_mf/chengetal.2013twowaystothetop73.pdf
Moreover, according to Kruger and Fitzgerald (2011), females prefer prestige to dominance.
I think once again it shows that a 60-second google search destroys much of what HBDers think about the world.
psychologists don’t have “a casual regard for anything scientific”, they have no regard for anything scientific, because they can’t discern the difference between science and pseudo-science.
‘For example one can understand that freestyle rap requires rhyming words but that doesn’t mean one can think of the right rhyme at the right time.’
The former understands freestyle rap to a lower degree than the latter. IQ 100 understands that rocket scientists build rockets. IQ 150 understands how to build rockets.
‘Most people consider nerds highly intelligent yet nerds often lack an understanding of how to mate prolifically which is important to advancing genes in many environments.’
False. Eliot Roger understood perfectly well what girls liked. He just couldn’t bring himself to become the correct person, either through lack of will, motivation, or aversion to the painful process of learning. Nerds tend to have silly ‘moral’ hangups.
‘Your definition is meaningless when it comes to artificial intelligence’
So? Intelligence generally refers to ‘human intelligence.’ Not only that, but advancing one’s genes = survival and replication. If a machine can understand how to go about doing both, it’s a functional equivalent, even in the absence of genes.
‘ you could improve your definition by saying intelligence is the mental abilities required for survival. The problem with taking the biologist’s definition of adapt too literally is it depends as much on mating success as on survival success while only the latter seems especially related to intelligence as commonly defined.’
But survival is only beneficial because it allows the organism to reproduce. Survival qua survival is meaningless. That’s why humans are superbly healthy for a very short amount of time in their lives…because surviving that amount of time was optimum for reproduction.
The former understands freestyle rap to a lower degree than the latter
I would say they both understand freestyle rap, but only one has the verbal fluency to actually do it.
False. Eliot Roger understood perfectly well what girls liked. He just couldn’t bring himself to become the correct person, either through lack of will, motivation, or aversion to the painful process of learning. Nerds tend to have silly ‘moral’ hangups.
I don’t consider Eliot Rodger a nerd in the conventional sense. Stereotypical nerdiness resembles aspergers in its lack of social IQ and math/science types are more likely to have autistic relatives
So? Intelligence generally refers to ‘human intelligence.’
But why limit the definition to what it generally refers to. Artificial intelligence is the future
Not only that, but advancing one’s genes = survival and replication. If a machine can understand how to go about doing both, it’s a functional equivalent, even in the absence of genes.
I think most AI experts would consider a robot that could flexibly adapt to its “goals” across a wide variety of unpredictable situations to be intelligent even if replication and even survival were not among those goals. Indeed a robot that were trying to kill itself would even be considered super intelligent if it succeeded in doing so despite every human attempt to stop it. Ultimately when we judge the intelligence of another “mind”, we do so based on how efficiently it reaches its goals. Our first assumption is that it has the same goals we do, but if we learn that it doesn’t, we judge it by its own goals.
But survival is only beneficial because it allows the organism to reproduce. Survival qua survival is meaningless. That’s why humans are superbly healthy for a very short amount of time in their lives…because surviving that amount of time was optimum for reproduction.
The point is, did the most intelligent reproduce because they were the best at attracting mates or because they were smart enough to survive long enough to mate. I suspect it was much more the latter than the former. There’s a reason it’s called “survival of the fittest”, not “reproduction of the fittest”. I suspect natural selection trumped sexual selection when it came to intelligence
As a kindergarten student I used to think deeply about the difference between human- and artificial intelligence, and I concluded that artificial intelligence is no intelligence at all. Machines don’t have goals, and it doesn’t help that you set goals for them, they don’t care. Today, no longer in kindergarten, and long since out of uni, I still think and feel the same way.
Interesting…
In a sense humans are just machines too. We were given goals by evolution instead of computer programmers, but either way, we’re slaves to them
If you create machines that desire to replicate themselves through combining with another machine-sex and then wait for the machine lineage to go on for a million years.. then you have something comparable. it is not the individual human that defines the human but that long line of generations. Suicide machines that commit terrorist acts to feel the satisfaction of killing enemy machines.. that’s goals.
‘I would say they both understand freestyle rap, but only one has the verbal fluency to actually do it. ‘
Understanding what versus understanding how to —- types of understanding. The second guy has two levels of understanding. The first guy has one.
‘Stereotypical nerdiness resembles aspergers in its lack of social IQ and math/science types are more likely to have autistic relatives’
Oh right, he was an anomaly…of course. Read what people said about Eliot Roger. In their interactions, he comes off as a low social IQ, quiet, introspective dweeb. In his own personal world, he was an entirely different person. Why? Because he UNDERSTOOD, but he did not have the wherewithal or courage to ACT. Social skills are developed by first taking social risks. Nerds are risk AVERSE. IQ has a negative correl with risk-taking.
MRA forums fill up with thousands of nerds trying to find some super logical system to get them laid. And yet, despite learning a lot of (stupid) jive, still fail to go out on the weekends, still fail to talk to anyone, etc. Instead, they just sit around, theorizing about X or Y. The understand plenty. They simply refuse to act.
‘But why limit the definition to what it generally refers to. Artificial intelligence is the future’
As far as I know, the best we have for AI is the Turing Test. And all that is, is like the eponymous movie, an Imitation Game. So the benchmark for AI is human intelligence anyway. Can it act as though it is pursuing those goals?
‘I think most AI experts would consider a robot that could flexibly adapt to its “goals” across a wide variety of unpredictable situations to be intelligent even if replication and even survival were not among those goals.’
Not if they asked the robot ‘why’ and the robot said ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand. Autoexec.bat told me so.’
The ability to understand is the sine qua non of intelligence.
‘I suspect natural selection trumped sexual selection when it came to intelligence’
Plenty of experts suspect the opposite for humans.
“Some hypotheses about the evolution of the human brain argue that it is a sexually selected trait, as it would not confer enough fitness in itself relative to its high maintenance costs (a quarter to a fifth of the energy and oxygen consumed by a human).[7] Related to this is vocabulary, where humans, on average, know far more words than are necessary for communication. Miller (2000) has proposed that this apparent redundancy is due to individuals using vocabulary to demonstrate their intelligence, and consequently their “fitness”, to potential mates. This has been tested experimentally, and it appears that males do make greater use of lower-frequency (more unusual) words when in a romantic mindset compared to a non-romantic mindset, meaning that vocabulary is likely to be used as a sexual display (Rosenberg & Tunney, 2008).”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection_in_human_evolution
Humans got smart to spit game…what a headline that’d be.
Understanding what versus understanding how to —- types of understanding. The second guy has two levels of understanding. The first guy has one.
We have a different understanding of the word understanding. To me understand means “grasp the concept; comprehend”. To you understanding just means mental ability.
Oh right, he was an anomaly…of course.
Exactly. Most nerds don’t dress fashionable, listen to Whitney Houston music, write autobiographies and murder people.
Read what people said about Eliot Roger. In their interactions, he comes off as a low social IQ, quiet, introspective dweeb. In his own personal world, he was an entirely different person. Why? Because he UNDERSTOOD, but he did not have the wherewithal or courage to ACT.
Good for him. But he’s not the poster boy for all nerds, if he even qualifies as a nerd at all and I have yet to see any brilliant social insights from him.
Social skills are developed by first taking social risks. Nerds are risk AVERSE. IQ has a negative correl with risk-taking.
Math/science types (whether you want to call them nerds or not), also have a higher rate of autistic relatives, so their social problems are probably not entirely explained by emotional problems. They seem to also lack social understanding (at least relative to their overall IQ)
MRA forums fill up with thousands of nerds trying to find some super logical system to get them laid. And yet, despite learning a lot of (stupid) jive, still fail to go out on the weekends, still fail to talk to anyone, etc. Instead, they just sit around, theorizing about X or Y. The understand plenty. They simply refuse to act.
The fact that they are using logical systems to understand women might itself imply cognitive disability. They may lack the ability to read facial expressions, and voice tones and interpret body language and adapt their own body language, facial expressions, and voice tones rapidly in real time.
Not if they asked the robot ‘why’ and the robot said ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand. Autoexec.bat told me so.’
I disagree. I think most people (expert or otherwise) who see something using behavior to successfully pursue its goal in the face of unpredictable obstacles would conclude that thing is smart, even if its goals were alien to our own.
The ability to understand is the sine qua non of intelligence.
No. That’s only one part of it.
Plenty of experts suspect the opposite for humans.
“Some hypotheses about the evolution of the human brain argue that it is a sexually selected trait, as it would not confer enough fitness in itself relative to its high maintenance costs
The fitness benefits are enormous even relative to the cost, and if intelligence is sexually selected, why do low IQ people have the most children? Why do men find dumb women sexier?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/05/dumb_women_do_men_find_them_more_attractive_.html
Why do women prefer dumb jocks to high IQ nerds? Why do women go nuts over athletes and rock stars and not over Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg? Why don’t Asian guys get all the girls?
Sexual selection may have played some role in the evolution of human intelligence, but I strongly suspect survival was the much bigger advantage of being smart (and if women evolved to like smart men, it’s largely because smart men can help the family survive)
You failed to take physical attraction into consideration. Asian guys are generally not attractive to women for this reason. Regarding men preferring bimbos, there’s a point where dumb women are not attractive.
‘ To you understanding just means mental ability. ‘
No it doesn’t. You described two levels of understanding, one of them shallower than the other. What you said is closer to ‘one person understands math involves manipulating numbers, another person understands how to manipulate numbers.’
‘Most nerds don’t dress fashionable, listen to Whitney Houston music, write autobiographies and murder people.’
Yes, they don’t. Most nerds are sexually frustrated like him and express it in similar ways sans murder.
‘The fact that they are using logical systems to understand women might itself imply cognitive disability. They may lack the ability to read facial expressions, and voice tones and interpret body language and adapt their own body language, facial expressions, and voice tones rapidly in real time. ‘
Why? Any of those woo-woo systems is fine. They essentially boil down to ‘talk to girls, split after a few minutes if she isn’t fun.’ The nerds never talk to the girls.
‘I disagree.’
Ok. If you think an individual who does x or y and doesn’t understand any of it beyond ‘I was programmed to do so,’ is smart, then your definition at least misses the mark of TTT.
‘That’s only one part of it’
Maybe, but it is the essential ingredient. All the other qualities are themselves outgrowths of understanding.
‘ if intelligence is sexually selected, why do low IQ people have the most children? Why do men find dumb women sexier?’
First, you’re analyzing a historical evolutionary trend (pre-agricultural) through the lens of modern society (low IQ people have the most kids). Second, intelligence isn’t the only variable to consider.
Women like higher-status men. Men like dumber women because a dumber woman is more likely to find him higher status.
Jocks usually aren’t particularly dumb. Athletes as a group are smarter than average. So, you have men in tip top physical shape who are also somewhat bright or at least average….asking why women like them is a silly question.
Personally, I believe intelligence was sexually selected to the extent that it’s a health marker. Once again, the most healthy individuals — CEO types — are slightly bright, tall, and good-looking
‘I strongly suspect survival was the much bigger advantage of being smart’
I strongly disagree. Nature simply is not that difficult, which is why Neanderthals could survive in the cold. And an ancient man wasn’t going to outthink bacteria or parasites.
I strongly disagree. Nature simply is not that difficult, which is why Neanderthals could survive in the cold.
We don’t know how intelligent Neanderthals were, nor do we know what physical adaptations they may have had that could have negated low intelligence.
And even if nature were not that difficult, that doesn’t mean intelligence evolved through sexual selection. It could just mean intelligence evolved from competition and war between hominids and other humans.
So, you have men in tip top physical shape who are also somewhat bright or at least average….asking why women like them is a silly question.
Correct! One thing that is circulating on the internet is that women discount a man’s looks when it comes to courtship, and look only for his wallet and his social status relative to other men. This of course is not even remotely true.
Social dominance is not a bio- ”trait” or phenotype, set of limited traits that produce a unique combination. But, a poet tend to have greater predisposition (i mean, innate brain tolerance and understanding about ”metaphor thinking style”) to be poet, i.e, somewhere which can think easily in a metaphor style, greater and remote associations. Literally speaking, social dominance is a result of environmental or circunstancial factors and genetic predispositions and generally, people, specially men, with higher testosterone rates, can be more intrinsically motivated to be socially dominant, naturally dominant, the way to speak with other people, manipulation ability, ”inner force” to search this kind of goals, the way to walking, the (innate, natural or expontaneous) way to see…. Literally speaking, no there a ”social dominance trait”, but there a ”dominant personality”. Social dominance is a product of interaction of environmental circunstances and collective predispositions. Human environment is system, structure of power, social, cultural and economic hierarchy, in many scales, nano (personal, our interactions with our families and close friends), micro (interactions with many people, communities) and macro (interactions of decisions of president Obama and american people).
Dominant personality is one of the causes of social dominance.
” In a sense humans are just machines too. We were given goals by evolution instead of computer programmers, but either way, we’re slaves to them”
If we are not what we are, then there is some kind of soul?? We = innate and unconcious personality (or persona), i called ”dualistic personality”, inner conflict between moral goals, and ‘soul’, encapsulate both primitive personalities.
Wesley Morganston, or nydwracu, is an excellent writer.
‘So yes such a person had enough mental adaptability to solve the problem, but the problem was easy. ‘
Pumpkin, the point is this: all moral problems are easy. It is easy to invent a moral loophole.
‘ In other words, intelligence may make the problems we have to solve more difficult, but it increases our ability to problem solve. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to juggle two conflicting ideas at the same time.’
It’s not hard, but when you frame things in the context of adaptation, you must be prepared for the logical consequences. Your thoughts on the matter earlier were that highly intelligent people likely have more complicated moral systems. So, at the very least, past a certain point, the restriction in action will not be worth the additional problem solving, i.e. at some point being more intelligent will be maladaptive under your paradigm.
Put simpler — in your paradigm, having a complex moral system is indeed maladapative. Many roads to the same place. When there are many roads to one flaw, there is a problem.
‘You’re agreeing with me that if you control for an individual’s goals, the more intelligent, the more adaptive the behavior. ‘
Actually I’m not agreeing with you. Along the gradient I mentioned above, I’m pretty sure that there’s a relatively low ceiling for intelligence before it stops being ‘adaptive.’
‘essentially defining intelligence as the mental ability to get laid which is a really eccentric definition which I don’t think is accurate scientifically or colloquially.’
Wrong. I’m defining intelligence as the ability to understand what’s necessary to adapt, in the scientific sense.
Pumpkin, the point is this: all moral problems are easy. It is easy to invent a moral loophole.
If you’re a sociopath
It’s not hard, but when you frame things in the context of adaptation, you must be prepared for the logical consequences. Your thoughts on the matter earlier were that highly intelligent people likely have more complicated moral systems. So, at the very least, past a certain point, the restriction in action will not be worth the additional problem solving, i.e. at some point being more intelligent will be maladaptive under your paradigm.
Yes and no. Under my paradigm, maladaptive behaviour is behaviour that creates more problems then it solves. It’s likely true that some people are too smart for their own good, but it’s not their behaviour that created their problems, it’s their awareness of abstract dilemmas that wouldn’t burden a dumber person. The old saying “ignorance is bliss”
The part of the brain that adapts to problems is high functioning, but it’s causing a malfunction in the part of the brain that generates the problems to be solved
So yes, the overall system has become maladaptive, but i define intelligence as only the part of the system that’s still adapting to its function
Wrong. I’m defining intelligence as the ability to understand what’s necessary to adapt, in the scientific sense.
According to you science defines adaptive as reproducing, which means you’re defining intelligence as the ability to understand what’s necessary to get laid
‘If you’re a sociopath’
Yes, that’s the point. In pure, logical terms, all moral system solving is easy. That’s why the definition falls apart. Guilt comes from the system, but mentally adapting the system is easy.
Chris Kyle was the most successful sniper in US History. Read his book, read his stories, and honestly ask yourself if his superior mental adaptation was responsible. Under your paradigm, it was: he adopted black-white thinking, acquired a god complex, took his role as terrorizing the enemy as a license to tell bald-faced lies, etc. What a genius.
‘ it’s not their behaviour that created their problems’
If intelligence leads to complex moral systems at a higher rate, the higher the intelligence, then intelligence is directly responsible for a maladaptive behavior, i.e. the ‘high-functioning’ part is creating the problem. Indeed, the capability to create complex moral systems comes solely from that part.
‘The old saying “ignorance is bliss”’
So……are you admitting that smart people aren’t as happy?
‘According to you science defines adaptive as reproducing, which means you’re defining intelligence as the ability to understand what’s necessary to get laid’
Surviving and reproducing. You need to survive to reproduce. Even if you want to put it in crude terms, it is readily applicable.
Yes, that’s the point. In pure, logical terms, all moral system solving is easy. That’s why the definition falls apart. Guilt comes from the system, but mentally adapting the system is easy.
Guilt comes from understanding your actions hurt others and feeling bad about it. Intelligence will increase guilt by increasing your understanding of how much hurt you’ve caused, but if you’re a sociopath there is no problem to solve since you’re not bothered by human suffering
If intelligence leads to complex moral systems at a higher rate, the higher the intelligence, then intelligence is directly responsible for a maladaptive behavior, i.e. the ‘high-functioning’ part is creating the problem. Indeed, the capability to create complex moral systems comes solely from that part.
But the behavior is not maladaptive, the motives the behavior is serving are maladaptive. The function of intelligence is to adapt the behavior to the motive as efficiently as possible. The fact that the components of intelligence can cause other systems to be maladaptive is just an unfortunate side effect independent of the adaptive function intelligence itself evolved to perform.
No different from the fact that intelligence requires large brains and larger brains burden the musculoskeletal system. Analogously, intelligence requires awareness, and awareness burdens us with guilty motives. In both cases, intelligence might have caused more problems than it solved, but I’m only defining intelligence as adaptive at the behavioral level. Adaptive behavior in the service of malfunctioning motives is indeed maladaptive overall
So……are you admitting that smart people aren’t as happy?
Happiness is largely caused by achieving our goals. Smart people are better at reaching their goals, but they also may have goals that are harder to reach. Just because I define intelligent behavior as beneficial, does not mean I necessarily always define intelligence itself as beneficial. Intelligence is the ability to behave beneficially, but the ability itself doesn’t come cost free.
Surviving and reproducing. You need to survive to reproduce. Even if you want to put it in crude terms, it is readily applicable.
You’re defining intelligence as “understanding” how to solve evolutionary problems. But intelligence evolved to solve problems in general. It’s our feelings that generate the problems for intelligence to solve and they’re the ones that evolved to motivate us to solve evolutionary problems. If our feelings are maladaptive, then we’ll be motivated to solve the “wrong” problems and if our feelings are adaptive, intelligence will advance our genes,
‘Guilt comes from understanding your actions hurt others and feeling bad about it.’
No that is not the definition. Guilt comes from a sense of culpability for having committed an offense. It arises strictly from the system itself.
‘the behavior is not maladaptive’
If X causes everything else to be less adaptive, then X is also less adaptive. A complex moral system per se restricts ‘adaptability.’
‘ But intelligence evolved to solve problems in general’
Another sentence that makes no scientific sense. If intelligence in any way ‘evolved,’ the only problems it helped solve were those concerned in adaptation — surviving and reproducing.
No that is not the definition. Guilt comes from a sense of culpability for having committed an offense. It arises strictly from the system itself.
Guilt is an emotion. It’s something that you feel. You may need a logical reason for feeling it, but some people simply lack the emotion itself.
If X causes everything else to be less adaptive, then X is also less adaptive.
Intelligence can be less adaptive while still making behavior more adaptive, because behavior is only one part of an overall adaptive system.
Another sentence that makes no scientific sense. If intelligence in any way ‘evolved,’ the only problems it helped solve were those concerned in adaptation — surviving and reproducing.
And the best way to help solve those long-term is to evolve general problem solving, so over millions of years, that’s ultimately what evolution favored. Because any problem can have implications for surviving and reproducing, depending on the situation. If someone threatened to shoot me if I couldn’t solve a Rubik’s cube, then that becomes a survival problem. Thus evolution favored adaptability in the sense of adapting to any problem not specifically the problems of survival and reproduction (because those are constantly changing).
But what made intelligence specifically about survival and reproduction is the fact that we are motivated to use it that way. But changing the motivation does not change the nature of intelligence.
We humans are going to destroy ourselves. What great “adaptability”. You know it’s coming PP.