We have an intense desire to feel superior. Those blessed with intellect should have some noblesse oblige. To despise those who lack your genetic and mimetic gifts lacks grace. It is their very inferiority that provides you with the pleasure of feeling superior. Schopenhauer decries the Malthusian ocean he floated atop of, the people that let him live his life of the mind. What a dick.
so, i broadly agree with this, which is why i tried to leave the walled garden in the first place. the question i am trying to answer now is, what happens when trying to do this makes you worse?
i’m not certain you’ve yet earned the right to conclude that trying to do it makes you worse! :P Considering the set of all things that might someday go well, I don’t think all such things will necessarily go well in the beginning, nor do i think they’ll necessarily go well after a Significant Deliberate Attempt to Make Them Go Well. (I could ofc be totally wrong here—for instance maybe you’ve had many experiences that lead you to believe ‘trying do this makes you worse’, but you focused on the meetup in your post for narrative purposes.)
I’ve only attended one philosophy meetup, but most people seemed to be attending recreationally, not with the goal of believing more true things. The philosophy department chair was in attendance, and he seemed mildly horrified throughout.
I feel like I have some understanding of the ways in which people who are not rat-or-rat-adjacent care about believing true things and doing good things, but mostly that comes from simply being friends with them. For instance, I’ve not heard a certain friend of mine express many beliefs probabilistically or make many explicit verbal allowances for the likelihood of their being wrong, and I wouldn’t even claim “generally believing true things” is something they care about without at least asking them first, but: they’re very good at challenging certain subsets of their beliefs about themselves. They keep their actions consistent with their beliefs about the personal safety of the people around them, they treat safety as a sacred value even if it’s very inconvenient—which no one does well, in my experience. To a degree that I’m not really capable of describing, they’re better at doing good things in challenging situations than I am. And I’m grateful to know them for many reasons that wouldn’t fall under the umbrella of “believing true things and doing good things”! But I don’t think they’ve ever attended a philosophy meetup, and if they have, I think they probably treated it as something mostly recreational.
to whatever extent i feel pleasurable superiority, it’s not really enough to remotely make up for the fact that i feel like i genuinely cannot connect with most people in the ways that i would like to.
Being neither particularly intelligent, rational, or sociable I likely can’t offer the best advice.
However, if the goal is to feel less hate towards people you consider intellectually inferior to yourself, maybe you’re going about it backwards. Consider moves in the opposite direction. Find an environment where you are vastly outclassed, such that your contributions feel worthless, your efforts to improve yourself pointless, and you maybe even feel some bitter jealousy in your heart.
Seconding this. I am very smart but not as smart as famous 20th-century scientists. Modernity is full of so much crystallized intelligence that the gains you receive from fluid intelligence are largely disguised gains-from-trade or straight up gifts-from-benevolent-people. Hanging out with and learning from people smarter than me has revealed how I am objectively similar to stupid people, and then I can treat people stupider than me the way I want to be treated by people smarter than me: I want to be taught, but not condescended to.
We have an intense desire to feel superior. Those blessed with intellect should have some noblesse oblige. To despise those who lack your genetic and mimetic gifts lacks grace. It is their very inferiority that provides you with the pleasure of feeling superior. Schopenhauer decries the Malthusian ocean he floated atop of, the people that let him live his life of the mind. What a dick.
so, i broadly agree with this, which is why i tried to leave the walled garden in the first place. the question i am trying to answer now is, what happens when trying to do this makes you worse?
i’m not certain you’ve yet earned the right to conclude that trying to do it makes you worse! :P Considering the set of all things that might someday go well, I don’t think all such things will necessarily go well in the beginning, nor do i think they’ll necessarily go well after a Significant Deliberate Attempt to Make Them Go Well. (I could ofc be totally wrong here—for instance maybe you’ve had many experiences that lead you to believe ‘trying do this makes you worse’, but you focused on the meetup in your post for narrative purposes.)
I’ve only attended one philosophy meetup, but most people seemed to be attending recreationally, not with the goal of believing more true things. The philosophy department chair was in attendance, and he seemed mildly horrified throughout.
I feel like I have some understanding of the ways in which people who are not rat-or-rat-adjacent care about believing true things and doing good things, but mostly that comes from simply being friends with them. For instance, I’ve not heard a certain friend of mine express many beliefs probabilistically or make many explicit verbal allowances for the likelihood of their being wrong, and I wouldn’t even claim “generally believing true things” is something they care about without at least asking them first, but: they’re very good at challenging certain subsets of their beliefs about themselves. They keep their actions consistent with their beliefs about the personal safety of the people around them, they treat safety as a sacred value even if it’s very inconvenient—which no one does well, in my experience. To a degree that I’m not really capable of describing, they’re better at doing good things in challenging situations than I am. And I’m grateful to know them for many reasons that wouldn’t fall under the umbrella of “believing true things and doing good things”! But I don’t think they’ve ever attended a philosophy meetup, and if they have, I think they probably treated it as something mostly recreational.
to whatever extent i feel pleasurable superiority, it’s not really enough to remotely make up for the fact that i feel like i genuinely cannot connect with most people in the ways that i would like to.
Being neither particularly intelligent, rational, or sociable I likely can’t offer the best advice.
However, if the goal is to feel less hate towards people you consider intellectually inferior to yourself, maybe you’re going about it backwards. Consider moves in the opposite direction. Find an environment where you are vastly outclassed, such that your contributions feel worthless, your efforts to improve yourself pointless, and you maybe even feel some bitter jealousy in your heart.
Seconding this. I am very smart but not as smart as famous 20th-century scientists.
Modernity is full of so much crystallized intelligence that the gains you receive from fluid intelligence are largely disguised gains-from-trade or straight up gifts-from-benevolent-people. Hanging out with and learning from people smarter than me has revealed how I am objectively similar to stupid people, and then I can treat people stupider than me the way I want to be treated by people smarter than me: I want to be taught, but not condescended to.