[Rich]

Intelligent, educated people tend to become Marxists. Funny how that works, isn’t it @Rich?

So very crudely speaking we have two choices.

1 We can attempt to make our beliefs conform to reality

2 We can attempt to make reality conform to our beliefs

So Steve Jobs is often given as an example of someone who was successful at the latter. Now some people may argue he wasn't quite so successful when it came to his beliefs about cancer, but overall I think we can give him pretty high marks. Now I don't think many people think that Steve Jobs was stupid. So 1 may be difficult and it really helps to be intelligent, but arguably 2 has an even greater need for intelligence.

I had a personal advantage in understanding this before I saw this video. My father's father was a carpenter. My father went to university, at a time when very few working class boys went to a university. He got a first class honors, when that still really meant something. He got a PHD. But he was a Christian. Later he got another degree in Theology. He was never a priest or a Bishop, but rectors and vicars, not to mention the lay people often felt intellectually intimidated by him. its funny, but this is the irony, highly intelligent people have a huge advantage when it comes to maintaining beliefs that are not true. Super intelligent people really shine, super intelligent people really come into their own when it comes to defending beliefs against overwhelming evidence.

[Potemkin]

So very crudely speaking we have two choices.

1 We can attempt to make our beliefs conform to reality

2 We can attempt to make reality conform to our beliefs

So Steve Jobs is often given as an example of someone who was successful at the latter. Now some people may argue he wasn't quite so successful when it came to his beliefs about cancer, but overall I think we can give him pretty high marks. Now I don't think many people think that Steve Jobs was stupid. So 1 may be difficult and it really helps to be intelligent, but arguably 2 has an even greater need for intelligence.

I had a personal advantage in understanding this before I saw this video. My father's father was a carpenter. My father went to university, at a time when very few working class boys went to a university. He got a first class honors, when that still really meant something. He got a PHD. But he was a Christian. Later he got another degree in Theology. He was never a priest or a Bishop, but rectors and vicars, not to mention the lay people often felt intellectually intimidated by him. its funny, but this is the irony, highly intelligent people have a huge advantage when it comes to maintaining beliefs that are not true. Super intelligent people really shine, super intelligent people really come into their own when to comes to defending beliefs against overwhelming evidence.

What’s the point of being smart if you can’t defend your position against reality? Lol.

[Rich]

So its obviously limited what you can do in a psychology experiment like that. I studied a bit of psychology and it didn't take much time to realise the incredibly low quality of the average psychology experiment. A psychology experiment is better than anecdote but its not that much better. Arguably physics is starting to catch down to psychology. So much physics is being done, there's so many more physicists with such powerful technology and computers that its allowing physics to overcome its high sigmas. We're starting to produce experimentally verified wrong results in significant numbers. Generally wrong results tend to be more interesting than truthful ones, so they are more like to be remembered and their influence spread.

But I digress. In the example given in the video its not really that hard to nail down the right answer. The possibilities for a super intelligent in untruth advocacy are limited. Let's look at flat Earth. While I have written code to tranform from Latitude and Longitude to 3D to a 2D flat projection, I've never actually bothered to test the maths of the round earth model. The maths of round earth looks right to me, where the sun, moon and stars are in the sky at different times of the day in different parts of the year. The idea that all the mathematicians, physicists, engineers, mappers and technicians have got this wrong is absolutely absurd.

So the round earth geometry is again too simple to be malleable to ideological manipulation no matter how intelligent they are. However things change when we move in such areas as climate change or vaccines and health outcomes. Things become far more complex, the quality of the data becomes much worse and its not just a question of getting the wrong answer, its not always clear what the question is.

So is the earth round. Answer yes. Its not flat. Climate Change? If I say yes, what exactly was the question. Same with vaccines it can't be reduced to a simple yes / no answer. Same goes for race. You can say yes or no, but what was the question. This is why on these matters, challenge to the consensus increases with intelligence rather falling.

[Potemkin]

So its obviously limited what you can do in a psychology experiment like that. I studied a bit of psychology and it didn't take much time to realise the incredibly low quality of the average psychology experiment. A psychology experiment is better than anecdote but its not that much better. Arguably physics is starting to catch down to psychology. So much physics is being done, there's so many more physicists with such powerful technology and computers that its allowing physics to overcome its high sigmas. We're starting to produce experimentally verified wrong results in significant numbers. Generally wrong results tend to be more interesting than truthful ones, so they are more like to be remembered and their influence spread.

But I digress. In the example given in the video its not really that hard to nail down the right answer. The possibilities for a super intelligent in untruth advocacy are limited. Let's look at flat Earth. While I have written code to tranform from Latitude and Longitude to 3D to a 2D flat projection, I've never actually bothered to test the maths of the round earth model. The maths of round earth looks right to me, where the sun, moon and stars are in the sky at different times of the day in different parts of the year. The idea that all the mathematicians, physicists, engineers, mappers and technicians have got this wrong is absolutely absurd.

So the round earth geometry is again too simple to be malleable to ideological manipulation no matter how intelligent they are. However things change when we move in such areas as climate change or vaccines and health outcomes. Things become far more complex, the quality of the data becomes much worse and its not just a question of getting the wrong answer, its not always clear what the question is.

So is the earth round. Answer yes. Its not flat. Climate Change? If I say yes, what exactly was the question. Same with vaccines it can't be reduced to a simple yes / no answer. Same goes for race. You can say yes or no, but what was the question. This is why on these matters, challenge to the consensus increases with intelligence rather falling.

“Hey, Lenin, if you’re so smart, why hasn’t there been a revolution in Russia yet?”

*Lenin: creates the October Revolution*

“Oh, shit!”

[Tainari88]

What’s the point of being smart if you can’t defend your position against reality? Lol.

This is a fact of life. People arguing against reality. Like people in the US hating on 'illegals'. When most of their ancestors were illegals of the worst sort. Highly hypocritical. Here is a Native American shouting at MAGA people with their insistence of they are the 'real Americans'. None of them want to hear the truth of any sort. They want images of being from North America. They never were. The people who occupied North America had been here for a long time. What the real 'Americans' are claiming is that they rule the land and everyone who comes to the fifty states due to cheating, lying and stealing. Fair and square.

A lot of shooting, and killing off and rounding up in reservations etc in order to keep what they deemed their land. It was not their land. It was about force. And wars. Involuntary actions. Period.

If you are brave enough to realize that the obsession with guns in the USA is about that historical period of the American history called Manifest Destiny. They thought they had a right to conquer all the lands of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and South America. They wanted EVERYTHING. They were stopped due to administration. But they took over Mexico City. In the 1840s, they had some military cadette teens who were allowed the option of leaving Chapultepec castle and refused. They fought adult American soldiers and died defending Mexico.

Nicaragua. Walker. Honduras. Guatemala. Dominican Republic. Puerto Rico. Panama. Cuba. Interferences in Chile, in Colombia, Venezuela, shit how many nations did the US fucking interfere in?

Intelligence? Americans are brainwashed. You have to have a bunch of guns to kill anyone who is wanting a land that you steal and lie about to retain. That is the obsession with guns in the American psyche.

Look at this guy arguing with MAGA assholes.

Intelligence is about being able to understand what is just and fair versus what is convenient and unfair.

[Rancid]

Intelligent people are stupid.

[Potemkin]

Intelligent people are stupid.

Using your intelligence to argue against reality is what we call “progress”, @Rancid.

“Hey, Orville, Wilbur, if God had had meant us to fly, he’d have given us wings! You’re just being stupid!”

*Wright Brothers: invent the aeroplane*

“Oh, shit!”

[Wellsy]

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch04-s03.html

The criterion of practice cannot fully confirm or refute any notion completely. It is flexible enough to guard us against treating knowledge as an ossified truth that needs no development. At the same time it is sound enough to allow us to argue successfully against the varieties of agnosticism.

"The atom is indivisible." Is this true or false? For many centuries it was considered true and practice sanctioned it. In those days the atom was indeed indivisible, just as today it is practically divisible and elementary particles are as yet indivisible. Such is the level of contemporary practice. Practice is a "cunning" creature. It not only confirms truth and exposes error, it also keeps quiet about what is beyond its frame of reference.

Practice has many different facets and various levels of development, beginning from empirical experience and ending with rigorous scientific experiment. It is one thing to consider the practice of primitive man obtaining fire by means of friction. And quite another, the practice of the medieval alchemist trying to find the philosopher's stone that would change base metals into gold. Modern space flights, physical experiments with equipment of tremendous resolving power, computer calculations and heart surgery, the liberation movements of peoples, these are also practice.

Some theoretical propositions may be directly confirmed and put into practice (for example, the geologists' assumption that there is uranium ore in a certain place at a certain depth). Others have to be practically confirmed by extremely circuitous ways, involving long or short intermediate links, through other sciences, through the applied fields of know ledge, through the revolutionary action of the masses, whose effect may show only years later. This is how certain mathematical ideas, the propositions of theoretical physics, biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, history, aesthetic theory, and so on, take effect. Everything that is truly scientific must inevitably, directly or indirectly, sooner or later, be realised in life.

[Rich]

Everything that is truly scientific must inevitably, directly or indirectly, sooner or later, be realised in life.

One thing I never understood was why people said the epi cycle theory of planetary motion was wrong. Its brilliant you only need 2 cycles and its good enough unless you need the most extreme accuracy. Now you need to use ellipses not just circles and for decent accuracy those ellipses can't all be inside the same 2d plane, but 2 cycles is really good. And its even simpler because every planet has the same near circular 93 million mile, year long cycle as one of its cycles.

Now obviously cycles are commutative, but conceptually for Mercury and Venus it helps to think of that 93 million mile long cycle as the primary cycle and the other cycle as the epicycle, while for the other planets it helps conceptually to think of the 93 million mile cycle as the epi cycle, but mathematically they are equivalent.

[Tainari88]

Intelligent people are stupid.

Who is more intelligent in this exchange eh?

https://youtube.com/shorts/T_ihqlYWEhk? ... u57gPUPkcd

[Truth To Power]

Potemkin wrote:

Intelligent, educated people tend to become Marxists.

That is just false. I have known many intelligent, educated people, and other than the professors of philosophy, almost none of them became Marxists. Many years ago, I was a principal in a social science research project on the relationship between intelligence and opinion. It found there was essentially no relation between IQ, education, and people's political views on the left-right scale (though there were overwhelming differences on specific issues like teaching creationism in schools).

Marxism is like a religion for people who are too intelligent to believe in supernatural beings: it provides a framework for understanding the world that also explains that world's evils -- and justifies the resentment many intelligent and educated people feel at not receiving what they consider their due from it. But really intelligent and educated people who prefer to understand the world as they experience it themselves never become Marxists -- or at least, not for long once they leave school.

[ingliz]

I was a principal in a social science research project ...

The social sciences have a serious credibility problem because, in too many instances, their published research cannot be replicated and if it can't be replicated is it science.

Bias ...

1.7 The term ‘bias’ can also be employed in a more specific sense, to identify a particular source of systematic error: a tendency on the part of researchers to collect data, and/or to interpret and present them, in such a way as to favour false results that are in line with their prejudgments and political or practical commitments. This may consist of a positive tendency towards a particular, but false, conclusion. Equally, it may involve the exclusion from consideration of some set of possible conclusions that happens to include the truth.
1.8 Such bias can be produced in a variety of ways. The most commonly recognized source is commitments that are external to the research process, such as political attitudes, which discourage the discovery of uncomfortable facts and/or encourage the presentation of spurious ‘findings’. But there are also sources of bias that stem from the research process itself. It has often been pointed out, for example, that once a particular interpretation, explanation or theory has been developed by a researcher he or she may tend to interpret data in terms of it, be on the look out for data that would confirm it, or even shape the data production process in ways that lead to error. This can arise in survey research through the questions asked in an interview, or as a result of the way they are asked (Oppenheim, 1966). It is also a potential source of systematic error that has been recognized by experimental researchers, with various precautionary strategies being recommended (Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1969; Rosenthal, 1976). Nor does qualitative inquiry escape this kind of bias; indeed it is often thought to be particularly prone to it, not least because here, as is often said, ‘the researcher is the research instrument’. Thus, one widely recognized danger in the context of ethnography is that if the researcher ‘goes native’ he or she will interpret events solely from the point of view of particular participants, taking over any biases that are built into their perspectives.

— M. Hammersley and R. Gomm (1997) Bias in Social Research

[Truth To Power]

The social sciences have a serious credibility problem because, in too many instances, their published research cannot be replicated and if it can't be replicated is it science.

Bias ...

1.7 The term ‘bias’ can also be employed in a more specific sense, to identify a particular source of systematic error: a tendency on the part of researchers to collect data, and/or to interpret and present them, in such a way as to favour false results that are in line with their prejudgments and political or practical commitments. This may consist of a positive tendency towards a particular, but false, conclusion. Equally, it may involve the exclusion from consideration of some set of possible conclusions that happens to include the truth.
1.8 Such bias can be produced in a variety of ways. The most commonly recognized source is commitments that are external to the research process, such as political attitudes, which discourage the discovery of uncomfortable facts and/or encourage the presentation of spurious ‘findings’. But there are also sources of bias that stem from the research process itself. It has often been pointed out, for example, that once a particular interpretation, explanation or theory has been developed by a researcher he or she may tend to interpret data in terms of it, be on the look out for data that would confirm it, or even shape the data production process in ways that lead to error. This can arise in survey research through the questions asked in an interview, or as a result of the way they are asked (Oppenheim, 1966). It is also a potential source of systematic error that has been recognized by experimental researchers, with various precautionary strategies being recommended (Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1969; Rosenthal, 1976). Nor does qualitative inquiry escape this kind of bias; indeed it is often thought to be particularly prone to it, not least because here, as is often said, ‘the researcher is the research instrument’. Thus, one widely recognized danger in the context of ethnography is that if the researcher ‘goes native’ he or she will interpret events solely from the point of view of particular participants, taking over any biases that are built into their perspectives.

— M. Hammersley and R. Gomm (1997) Bias in Social Research

Obviously we were aware of such issues, and took reasonable precautions to address them. Our results sometimes surprised us, including the finding of no relation between IQ and left-right opinion, as all of us had high IQs and were left-leaning. We had seen the common claims that people on the right were generally not as intelligent, and assumed we would confirm it. We did not. What we did find was a cluster of skeptical/libertarian/nonconformist attitudes that was associated with higher IQ: distrust of authority, whether political, religious or scientific; defiance of convention; and idiosyncratic combinations of opinions typically associated with both the left and right. Another finding that surprised us (as we were all atheists) was that while higher IQ was associated with lower allegiance to typical church-based religions, it was not strongly associated with atheism or agnosticism.

I have spent hundreds of hours in partisan political trenches of the left, right, and center, and can report from my own experience that the rank and file membership of leftist parties tends to be less intelligent than that of rightist or centrist parties, at least here in Canada. The leadership of political parties tends to be highly intelligent -- often holding advanced degrees -- whatever their left-right orientation.

[Potemkin]

Obviously we were aware of such issues, and took reasonable precautions to address them. Our results sometimes surprised us, including the finding of no relation between IQ and left-right opinion, as all of us had high IQs and were left-leaning.

You’re not left-leaning, @Truth To Power. Non-conformist, yes, but not left-leaning.

We had seen the common claims that people on the right were generally not as intelligent, and assumed we would confirm it. We did not. What we did find was a cluster of skeptical/libertarian/nonconformist attitudes that was associated with higher IQ: distrust of authority, whether political, religious or scientific; defiance of convention; and idiosyncratic combinations of opinions typically associated with both the left and right.

Intelligent people question things more than unintelligent people do. Quelle surprise!

Another finding that surprised us (as we were all atheists) was that while higher IQ was associated with lower allegiance to typical church-based religions, it was not strongly associated with atheism or agnosticism.

See above about questioning things. Intelligent people are skeptical even towards atheism.

I have spent hundreds of hours in partisan political trenches of the left, right, and center, and can report from my own experience that the rank and file membership of leftist parties tends to be less intelligent than that of rightist or centrist parties, at least here in Canada. The leadership of political parties tends to be highly intelligent -- often holding advanced degrees -- whatever their left-right orientation.

People in leadership positions tend to be more intelligent than people in rank and file positions. Quelle surprise!

[Rugoz]

Oh look, a moron who never heard of bayesian priors.

[Rich]

Oh look, a moron who never heard of bayesian priors.

First Bayes didn't invent Bayesian priors, he was just the first recorded person who attempted to create mathematical formalisms for them. I did maths and further maths A levels and I'm pretty sure we were never taught about Bayesian priors, but probabilities and statistics was something that concerned me, so I spent significant time thinking about what do statistics prove and what is the probability of an event of which you have no prior knowledge.

In the experiment they are specifically asked what the studies support. Their priors should therefore be irrelevant to solving the problem. If I had been asked, I would have given the correct answer, but then have explained why I didn't find the evidence compelling, if it went against my predispositions..

[Rugoz]

In the experiment they are specifically asked what the studies support. Their priors should therefore be irrelevant to solving the problem. If I had been asked, I would have given the correct answer, but then have explained why I didn't find the evidence compelling, if it went against my predispositions..

Unless I missed it, the video never says what exactly people were asked.

But regardless, the two studies are fundamentally different. The skin cream study is an experiment, the gun control study is observational. In the case of gun control, there are no conclusions you can draw when simply being confronted with these numbers. I imagine people intuitively realize "this is too simple" and hence they default to their beliefs.

[Rancid]

Unless I missed it, the video never says what exactly people were asked.

But regardless, the two studies are fundamentally different. The skin cream study is an experiment, the gun control study is observational. In the case of gun control, there are no conclusions you can draw when simply being confronted with these numbers. I imagine people intuitively realize "this is too simple" and hence they default to their beliefs.

All this says is that science education is not effective. Actually, at least in America, all education is not effective.

WRT Science, what I mean is that basically every study done, never has super firm conclusions. If you look at the wording of studies and papers (I read many papers monthly), it's always wording like "these findings suggest". Which is the correct thing to do. A lot of studies also ways explain the various unknowns. "This data doesn't provide insight into...that requires more study to under"... stuff like that. THis is how I write day to day in my engineering job.

Science/Engineer... STEM has VERY VERY few hard truths. It's mostly statistics and suggestion. Good suggestions most of the time... but ultimately not 100%.

[Truth To Power]

You’re not left-leaning, @Truth To Power. Non-conformist, yes, but not left-leaning.

It's true that I consider myself a centrist on the grounds that the left is egalitarian, the right elitist, and I advocate justice, which requires elements of both. I have (absurdly) been called a fascist by socialists and a communist by conservatives. Because I advocate an equal individual right to liberty more consistently than is compatible with modern finance capitalism, I'm pretty sure most people in advanced capitalist countries would consider me a leftist.

Intelligent people question things more than unintelligent people do. Quelle surprise!

See above about questioning things. Intelligent people are skeptical even towards atheism.

Intelligence is the ability to understand. There doesn't seem to be anything essential in that quality that would imply skepticism, and there is certainly no lack of highly intelligent people who have fallen for scams, whether religions, Marxism, financial grifters, ESP, conspiracy theories, or whatever.

People in leadership positions tend to be more intelligent than people in rank and file positions. Quelle surprise!

But it's clear that (for -- in Dr Strangelove's delicious phrase -- reasons which must be all too obvious at this moment) one doesn't have to be very smart to be a leader of stupid people. Nevertheless, leaders on the left are highly intelligent. I sometimes saw them betray subtle and carefully controlled signs of exasperation with the stupidity of their rank and file: the slow eye roll, the compressed lips to suppress utterance of an accurate but disrespectful comment, etc.

[Cosmo]

Code: Select allIntelligent, educated people

I think I found the problem. Intelligence != education. Unless you want to claim that a gender studies graduate $200,000 in debt is smarter than a plumber who never went to college, but has a net worth of half a million dollars.