It is not surprising that ape tribes who evolved being sparsely rewarded for having an intelligent member, but with breeding dynamics based on groups’ cultural rules, would have a wide range of levels of intelligence even within one “homogenous” population. It is experimentally verifiable that most of them are not very smart.
You have effectively been brought up in a church that indoctrinated you to think that all surviving hominins are “equal” and that those who disagree are evil and edgy. You deeply internalized a lot of propaganda, which provenly has a remarkable psychological effect on even very intelligent people. As with victims of actual religions and cults, the cognitive dissonance from seeing through some core tenet like this is ~traumatizing. “I don’t want to think of ~98% of people as being [what they are]” is your brain vestigially participating in a chanted prayer. But, was any of that propaganda experimentally verifiable?
It’s pretty clear which side of your cognitive dissonance is fallible here.
You’re allowed to just, decide to not be a member of that cult anymore. To decide not to have faith in their made up words anymore. If you feel the value of an entity is increased by having a given level of intellectual ability, you’re just, allowed to think that. It’s hard to say that’s a less sensible criterion of value than judging entities simply by whether their DNA is capable of producing fertile offspring with them.
Just don’t say it out loud or the stupid apes will eat you. (Typical.)
I think this is mostly wrong in ways that make it hard to reform it. From the top:
It is experimentally verifiable that most of them are not very smart.
is a very silly thing to say! What did you mean by this: that most of the world can’t cook broccoli? It is very hard to learn to cook broccoli, but because we all know how to do this, we don’t find it impressive. This sentence boils down to “Most people are not the smartest people”, a statement that I’d argue is directionally true but largely oversells itself (if you know how to graft trees, write a database, and repair a washing machine, you’re a very unusual person! Smugly declaring that the Common Rube is obviously dumber than you elides a lot of important information about the guy who fixed your car a few years back).
Continuing, we have
You have effectively been brought up in a church that indoctrinated you to think that all surviving hominins are “equal” and that those who disagree are evil and edgy.
an attempt to insulate this post from critique (after all, anyone who disagrees is just deluded!)
Then we have an is–ought confusion:
If you feel the value of an entity is increased by having a given level of intellectual ability, you’re just, allowed to think that.
And end on one last attempt to make sure any criticism is read as an attack instead of a correction
Just don’t say it out loud or the stupid apes will eat you. (Typical.)
In general, I think a LessWrong comment should at least attempt to approach its subject matter with a truth-seeking lens, not a conspiratorial bundle of shadowy assertions. It is the case that people have different skill levels at different tasks, and it’s further the case that a lot of these different skill levels are correlated (“G factor”). These facts are not enough to compel you to change your valuation of people, and they are not something that must be darkly alluded to on this website.
(trying to gracefully ignore your several verbose misreadings of my rhetoric, and instead engage with your brief attempt at a constructive contribution to the conversation, the following flamboyantly false statement)
These facts are not enough to compel you to change your valuation of people
You don’t get to tell me about my valuation of people; I will value them however I damn well please (obviously).
(But I’m being redundant; this was what my comment already said.)
Apologies for the offense, but luckily, (perhaps reciprocally to an error I made first) the sentence I set out to write differs greatly from the sentence you read. Perhaps a reword will help:
One is not required by facts to change one’s (terminal-ish) values.
It would be absurd to have meant “you (AngryTroll)”, but the grammatical feature of English where “you” refers to a general person makes good sense
The word “compel” was important there, not flourish. Even you (AngryTroll) are not required to change your moral accounting of other people by your beliefs about their intelligence. A different way this could go would be to go thr “It All Adds Up To Normality” route and realize that your accounting of other people is not necessarily dependant on their intelligence.
Sorry, I know that’s messy in that there’s a grammatical correction and a philosophical objection, but I think it would muddy the waters to leave either out of my reply.
interestingly my wife , who is a more ‘naturally intelligent’ and perceptive ape than yours truly , often says “think it , don’t say it” when the inclusivity industry affects our life in some irritating manner.
It is not surprising that ape tribes who evolved being sparsely rewarded for having an intelligent member, but with breeding dynamics based on groups’ cultural rules, would have a wide range of levels of intelligence even within one “homogenous” population. It is experimentally verifiable that most of them are not very smart.
You have effectively been brought up in a church that indoctrinated you to think that all surviving hominins are “equal” and that those who disagree are evil and edgy. You deeply internalized a lot of propaganda, which provenly has a remarkable psychological effect on even very intelligent people. As with victims of actual religions and cults, the cognitive dissonance from seeing through some core tenet like this is ~traumatizing. “I don’t want to think of ~98% of people as being [what they are]” is your brain vestigially participating in a chanted prayer. But, was any of that propaganda experimentally verifiable?
It’s pretty clear which side of your cognitive dissonance is fallible here.
You’re allowed to just, decide to not be a member of that cult anymore. To decide not to have faith in their made up words anymore. If you feel the value of an entity is increased by having a given level of intellectual ability, you’re just, allowed to think that. It’s hard to say that’s a less sensible criterion of value than judging entities simply by whether their DNA is capable of producing fertile offspring with them.
Just don’t say it out loud or the stupid apes will eat you. (Typical.)
I think this is mostly wrong in ways that make it hard to reform it. From the top:
is a very silly thing to say! What did you mean by this: that most of the world can’t cook broccoli? It is very hard to learn to cook broccoli, but because we all know how to do this, we don’t find it impressive. This sentence boils down to “Most people are not the smartest people”, a statement that I’d argue is directionally true but largely oversells itself (if you know how to graft trees, write a database, and repair a washing machine, you’re a very unusual person! Smugly declaring that the Common Rube is obviously dumber than you elides a lot of important information about the guy who fixed your car a few years back).
Continuing, we have
an attempt to insulate this post from critique (after all, anyone who disagrees is just deluded!)
Then we have an is–ought confusion:
And end on one last attempt to make sure any criticism is read as an attack instead of a correction
In general, I think a LessWrong comment should at least attempt to approach its subject matter with a truth-seeking lens, not a conspiratorial bundle of shadowy assertions. It is the case that people have different skill levels at different tasks, and it’s further the case that a lot of these different skill levels are correlated (“G factor”). These facts are not enough to compel you to change your valuation of people, and they are not something that must be darkly alluded to on this website.
(trying to gracefully ignore your several verbose misreadings of my rhetoric, and instead engage with your brief attempt at a constructive contribution to the conversation, the following flamboyantly false statement)
You don’t get to tell me about my valuation of people; I will value them however I damn well please (obviously).
(But I’m being redundant; this was what my comment already said.)
Apologies for the offense, but luckily, (perhaps reciprocally to an error I made first) the sentence I set out to write differs greatly from the sentence you read. Perhaps a reword will help:
It would be absurd to have meant “you (AngryTroll)”, but the grammatical feature of English where “you” refers to a general person makes good sense
The word “compel” was important there, not flourish. Even you (AngryTroll) are not required to change your moral accounting of other people by your beliefs about their intelligence. A different way this could go would be to go thr “It All Adds Up To Normality” route and realize that your accounting of other people is not necessarily dependant on their intelligence.
Sorry, I know that’s messy in that there’s a grammatical correction and a philosophical objection, but I think it would muddy the waters to leave either out of my reply.
interestingly my wife , who is a more ‘naturally intelligent’ and perceptive ape than yours truly , often says “think it , don’t say it” when the inclusivity industry affects our life in some irritating manner.