I suspect getting closer to Radix may do the same trick. Alternate or lateral thinking. Willingness to listen to new ideas and try to tackle the more complex.

Greed, selfishness, MINE! MINE! MINE! is the basest of instincts and requires no intelligence.

Intelligence is planning, planting, cultivating, teamwork, sharing, fair play, building foundations for the future so that all can thrive.

An intelligent person knows that they are not the only person on the planet. That it is important to have a functioning society in which all people have justice and opportunity. That teamwork will take you further than competitiveness. That cooperating with neighbors yields better dividends than fighting with neighbors. That bigoted and ignorant is no way to go through life.

Conservatism is Might Makes Right.

Liberalism is Right Makes Might.

Well said.

I'm not one of the exceptionally brilliant ones, but this is a great place to hang out with them!

Everybody knows that the stable genius is the humblestest pos in the world!11

in an actual stable.

One of the youngsters asked me what was the most important thing I'd learned since I was his age. This was an easy answer:

'I learned that I thought I knew it all at 13. Then I turned 18, and went to college and realised how there were some things I didn't know, after all. About the time I was 30, I realized I didn't know a damned thing. So the most important thing I've learned is never to say I know something when I don't. The only way I can know anything is to buckle down and study it. And even then, I may not know all that much about it. Somebody else will be smarter or quicker at getting it than me, and that's just how it is.'

The main problem is Left-Wing and Liberalism aren't the same things. When the scientists compared high intelligence, they found more liberalism and lower authoritarianism. (Which, there are all kinds of weird issues about how they're measuring and categorizing all this accompanied by confounding factors in education, but let's just accept it at face value for the moment)

Left-Wing isn't anti-authoritarianism, lol. It's very authoritarian in nature.

But liberalism, when we think of it as critical thinking, pluralism, tolerance, skepticism, and receptiveness to change and new ideas is lower on authoritarianism. If you look at hard Marxists, they are the dead opposite of anti-authoritarian. They very much want to impose their vision. Liberals ain't that.

The question is - how authoritarian is a person? And I do find the more intelligent people are, the less authoritarian they are inclined to be. (The authoritarians tend to be the ones who fancy themselves smart, but aren't nearly as bright as they esteem)

Because there is a lot of that on the harder Left. A lot. But people considered liberal in the typical Western tradition tend not to be that.

And the fact the author tries to lump it all together speaks to a political purpose in presentation rather than an honest assessment of personality and intelligence features.

Still. I expect lotion sales to go up.

And I'm officially dead. Thanks, I needed that belly laugh.

The smartest people I know are not protesting. They're busy with their demanding jobs and their families. They tend to be perplexed by politicians and they tend to take a practical approach to life. And I see this with all generations - the millennial geniuses the same as Gen X and boomers. They are busy, they are hardworking, and they're not interested in artificial purism.

A college student who has time to protest all day long in late April probably isn't studying anything difficult. No judgement - the choice is theirs - but let's not pretend that they're the smartest kids in school.

My second round of college has been interesting. You hope to reach that point where you're comfortable with, "I know what I know, but I am also very aware of what I do not know."

That attitude is just not as in evidence as you'd hope it'd be. For both students and professors. I read this book a really long time ago that went something along the lines of, "A man who has read a thousand books can be the most interesting companion, but a man who has read three books can be your most dangerous enemy."

People who learn a little bit, assume they know everything, and then it's just off to the races. Because they fuckin read a book. And I think it's why you see this kind of repetitive brainlessness in what are supposed to be educated environments. It's always the same words and phrases, arguments that feel plagiarized without any understanding of the foundations and origins of what they're discussing. They just don't have the knowledge base. It's all surface and sloganeering.

And it's so tired. Like if one more person says the word "decolonize" with no palpable knowledge of history, I'm going to find their parents and fine them for reproducing. They're the kind of people you talk to for ten seconds and realize, "Oh shit. They don't know anything."

And the thing is, it's not just students and/or protesters. Those you can kind of forgive. Limited knowledge and experience. I get it.

It's the adults that I cannot believe. I've had professors my age who are some of the dumbest people I have ever met. Just truly could not string together an argument if they tried. They're smart enough to get their degrees, but let's be honest. You do not have to be a towering intellect to get a degree. This shit is easy as sin. You just have to go through the motions and get that piece of paper. Then plop in with people who share your views, and you all promote each other into positions throughout the department.

I have been in classes over the past few years - electives in sociology, literature, and history I take for fun mainly - where the professors are so unaware of their lack of knowledge, so insistent on their ideologies, and so unwilling to engage in any debate or discussion, I have genuinely wondered if I should be reporting them somewhere. I shouldn't be in college classes looking at a professor and thinking, "Oh shit. I know more than them."

And I don't mean that in a cocky, puffed up overconfident student sort of way. I mean that as a fortysomething adult who's overeducated and realizes, no, a lot of these people do not know nearly as much as they ought to before they start teaching others.

STEM doesn't have this problem, though. All my STEM professors have been absolutely delightful. Because you actually kind of do have to know what you're talking about to advance there. It is unfortunately just not the case in the humanities these days. Just go through some published sociology papers some time. Within ten minutes, it becomes screamingly obvious how much nonsense they talk.

Authoritarian thinking doesn't require a whole lot of imagination. Just follow the biggest and meanest and hurt those that he tells you to hurt. Very appealing to the cruel and stupid among us.

I know people who think North Korea is a socialist paradise. They think Stalin got a bad rap. I saw a DU post the other day extolling the virtues of Cuba under Castro.

Personally, I don't accept that an IQ score is actually a measure of anything real.

I wrote this a long time ago on a website where I am currently banned, but I still hold to the basic ideas:

A Note on This Race and IQ Business.

Last edited Sun Apr 21, 2024, 02:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Should read the article .

...in any case.

My view of liberalism is that it is about ethics and not some mysterious view of whatever it is that "intelligence" may be.

I believe that on ethical grounds, liberalism is the best view to hold across any spectrum connected to abilities of any kind.

For me, it is about morality and ethics, but I'm not surprised to see it could also be about intelligence. It seems smart to realize that the world is a better place if everyone's needs are addressed. I guess it depends on what kind of a world you want to live in.

different types of intelligence.
Great example is The Rain Man. Albert Einstein and George Washington were both terrible spellers.

In the 18th century, English wasn't quite as formalised or standard as it is would be by the onset of the 19th century. People spelled things all kinds of ways back then, even within the same Dear so-and-so letter, and it was all good, as long as readers could figure out what the writer was trying to say.

Jane Austen, for instance, was lax about how she spelled various words she used. Publishers brought her into line with the early standards, but they still knew what she was trying to say in her more varied spellings--because she was from that time period where spelling with English was still in a great deal of flux.

Einstein is rumoured to have been dyslexic, which brings its own spelling problems with it. Like Austen, his misadventures with the written word didn't stop people from understanding what he was trying to say.

Dysgraphia, terrible penmanship and very bad at spelling.
My psychiatrist helped me understand it, but an Anthropology Professor helped me the most. Told me I’m not a bad speller, I use alternative spelling. She said if the other party understands the message I have been successful at the communication. Childhood PTSD and ADHD was not diagnosed until I turned 40. Back in the late 50s and early 60s those problems were not a thing.

on traditional IQ tests. I'm sure there are others who don't score well for other reasons, but this is one I am familiar with. Plus, so many people I know well, from family members to former school mates, who score very high on IQ tests, are, well, not smart.

that is a great bit of creative writing at your link. Impressive. I envy that talent.

DK's loss that they booted you off.

It brought me back here, which is a site that is owned, but is not an autocracy; democratic principles govern this place, i.e. the jury system, MIRT, etc.

It's a case of "Don't tell me what to do, show me." DU not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.

Over there they had a huge festival of admiring the work of the climate scientist Jim Hansen, and making sure that everyone knew that they "believed" him (as if science were connected with belief) until he wrote a paper they didn't like, this one:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Referencing the paper, I made the statement that if the paper were accurate - it is and is often cited and mimicked - then opposing nuclear power was nothing short of murder.

Kos and his pal Timmy (Meteor Blades) really, really, really, really didn't like this true statement, and I was banned.

I was banned in the week of December 16, 2012. There is evidence that the dogmatic chanting they've been over there, as far as I can tell, is bullshit, at least as far as they give a shit about climate change, about which they really couldn't care less.

That week the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO₂ was 394.37 ppm as measured at the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory. As of this morning, it was reported as follows:

Week beginning on April 14, 2024: 426.34 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 423.82 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 401.84 ppm
Last updated: April 21, 2024.

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

In other words, in less than 12 years, 31.97 ppm have been added to the atmosphere while they carried on with their antinuke "wind and solar will save us" chants. (The number reported this morning is 0.01 short of the all time record for CO₂ concentrations set a few weeks ago.)

Look, anyone who supports Democrats is doing work for the good as far as I'm concerned. This said, just as because one is a Democrat one is therefore intelligent is not a true statement, it is also a true statement that "being a Democrat does not preclude one from being a dogmatic asshole" is also true statement.

In working to reelect Joe Biden and other Democrats to other offices, Markos and Timmy are doing a good thing.

However the evidence is unambiguous that in pushing easily refuted reactionary nonsense about climate change, embracing dogma at the expense of all humanity, all future generations, and the planet as a whole, they are pernicious. Uncritical faith in so called "renewable energy" is making things worse faster than ever. It is, in fact, reactionary, not progressive, since, at least in my view, to be a progressive one needs at a minimum to understand numbers to make progress. Dependence on the weather for energy was abandoned in the 19th and early century for a reason.

I note that while I have disagreements with the Biden administration, my strong support for the Biden administration notwithstanding, on punctilios relating to energy - I don't support solar and wind energy and I don't support fossil fuels - the Biden administration's support for nuclear energy is the best of any Presidential administration in recent memory and is so for the best of reasons, climate change. I don't know if Markos or Timmy would ban the staff at the DOE, just praised by Dr. Kathryn Huff as she returns to academia, or if they'd ban Joe Biden (who would surely never be as crude as I am in his support of nuclear energy) but that's the truth: Joe Biden supports nuclear energy.

Thanks again for your kind words.

20 years ago Jost et al examined motivators of conservative cognition and that collection of researchers found conservatives were rather closed minded and rather more interested in simple black and white reasoning than complex consideration of shades of gray.

Although Jost et al didn't directly consider left-wing views it makes some sense that left-wing views would be at least different if not opposite of the right-wing. If you look at US liberals vs US conservatives you find greater diversity of views among liberals than conservatives. To get that diversity, the group as a whole must be open-minded and willing to consider more sources/points of view.

The US population self-assorts into political associations. The result of that reflects underlying cognitive features used in the self-assortment. It seems quite possible that those cognitive features are innate and so exist before political assimilation.

Which is to say, being a liberal doesn't so much increase a groups average intelligence, but that people with curiosity and cognitive skill feel most comfortable associated with liberal politics.

But the commentary says "imply ... cause[s]". That's a big leap.

can determine direction.

that can be used to direct profitable places of further research

Chi-square testing is very simple and based on comparisons of simple frequencies.
Epidemiologists often use simple contingency tables to find suspect foods during investigations of foodborne outbreaks.

A smorgas board style banquet might have dozens of food items, sometimes made of multiple ingredients that have come from various vendors that were supplied from multiple states or even multiple countries. Chi-square tests are one of the statistics to focus attention on such rationally suspect food-items.

At that juncture, decisions to collect and do microbial analysis and to exam handling, storage, prep and cooking can be done to confirm suspicions and to further locate the problem in the long chain from field/lake/stream or sea to the consumer's table.

But correlation certainly doesn't prove causation. That requires additional study.

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim, in all these cases, is the wise man's task.

I'm very doubtful about categories like "left wing" and high intelligence. The term "left wing" has become media shorthand that covers way too much ground. Same with high intelligence. ChatGPT is highly intelligent. I have high hopes for it.

Further study might turn up their strengths, maybe reaction time, visual-spatial acuity, who knows? That stuff hasn't been studied yet.

However, the different brain wiring shows up from early childhood on, as longitudinal studies have shown. The differences are profound enough that I've often wondered if we aren't in the middle of a species split, something that has happened before and just yesterday on an evolutionary scale. A tribal split has certainly occurred and the only way we're going to cope with that one is to take religion and politics off the table as subjects for discussion with them, polite or otherwise.

I knew conservative types who called themselves lefties in the 60s, hung around some of the movers and shakers. They tended more toward violence back then and tracking them down confirmed they are now staunch conservatives. It was only surface stuff, the fashion of the times. At our cores, we really can't be converted. We can be made more tolerable and that is essential.

And the world certainly only becomes more complex.

😂

but there you have it

The world is shades of gray and not black and white. Liberal thought necessitates seeing all sides of anything. Being able to see all sides of any problem or issue is a big part of intelligence.

Liberalism and intelligence are linked, they each cause more of the other.