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"From what I’ve observed, really smart people tend to be right, and you can safely accept their viewpoints." What? I couldn't believe this statement. It compl
by api 8y ago
"From what I’ve observed, really smart people tend to be right, and you can safely accept their viewpoints."
What?
I couldn't believe this statement. It completely neglects the massive differences that exist between people of any intelligence in terms of what and how they think. I'm talking about things like educational level, ideological biases, epistemological approaches to thinking, etc. It also completely neglects the honesty and integrity of the person you are emulating.
To give just one example: I've found that most of the "conspiracy nuts" I've met (people who think we didn't go to the Moon, etc.) are highly intelligent, probably pretty far above average. If anything being highly intelligent makes it much easier to rationalize a ridiculous belief system. Any idiot can imagine a round Earth that spins and orbits the sun but it takes someone with very high intelligence to understand ether vortex theory. Judging by the intricacies of their speculations the "bakers" who assemble bizarre far-fetched conspiracy theories out of QAnon's cold reading act are also quite intelligent.
Con artists also tend to be highly intelligent, hence my comment about honesty and integrity.
For some odd reason it seems like a whole lot of very bright people have adopted this weird kind of biological determinist hard materialist view of cognition and its quality. By materialist I mean it reminds me of Marxist dialectical materialism: the idea that the state of society is a pure function of its technology and other capital. A bunch of people think you can measure someone's IQ and that will tell you how correct their opinions are. Smart people have better opinions because they can think more faster, or something.
I struggle to understand how anyone could possibly believe this. It's patently absurd. It's roughly analogous to saying you can tell the quality of a driver by the performance of the vehicle they are driving, or that the correctness of a computer's output is a pure function of processor speed irrespective of what software it's running.
- 00N8 8y agoI agree. At best the argument that you can trust "smart" people is circular: that smartness is a socially constructed measure of how "good/right/clever" everyone else finds your thinking. so in general people will endorse the opinions of those they endorse as "smart people"
- knightofmars 8y ago100% this, "If anything being highly intelligent makes it much easier to rationalize a ridiculous belief system."
- knightofmars 8y agoI wager you're getting down voted due to people who see themselves as "smart" taking taking offense at the implication that they are just as fallible as every other human on the planet.
- misterprime 8y agoI'm assuming it's downvotes for implied respect for anyone that could question the moon landing or consider QAnon theories.
- api 8y agoIf that's the case then the downvoters dreadfully misread my post. That's not what I was saying at all. I was pointing out that bad ideas can be held by people regardless of their raw intelligence.
- noir_lord 8y agoI assume I'm a monkey pretending to be sapient. Psychologists have found that a lot of decision making is rationalisation of an instinctive decision. Those moments when you stand there thinking why the hell did I just agree to that etc.
- misterprime 8y ago>It's roughly analogous to saying you can tell the quality of a driver by the performance of the vehicle they are driving, or that the correctness of a computer's output is a pure function of processor speed irrespective of what software it's running. Good simile. >I struggle to understand how anyone could possibly believe [really smart people tend to be right]. You don't really struggle to understand that, do you? It's kinda shoved on us from an early age: "Respect your elders, they have more life experience.", "Do what the teacher says, they're the experts.", etc. It takes a fair amount of willpower to think "wow, no one else sees it this way, or at least if they do, they haven't come up with a solution".
- Jakkaps 8y agoMaybe I worded myself poorly. I meant 'really smart people' not in absolute IQ terms, but more in 'hey this dude believes some things about a subject he has knowledge of and from what I can tell he is well regarded among peers and seems smart'-terms.
- api 8y agoThat's a bit better but only tends to apply within limited domains. I've met a chemistry Ph.D that would be quite knowledgeable and likely correct when it comes to inorganic chemistry but who believes that the Earth is 6000 years old and that the Noah's Ark story is absolutely literal. Human beings can and often are extremely competent in some domains while simultaneously being highly irrational, misinformed, or just ignorant in others. Then you have to consider ideology and social conformity which can both bias people toward holding beliefs that don't make sense regardless of intelligence. My overall point is that intelligence is only weakly related to logical validity or overall correctness. What and how you think matter quite a bit and those things are learned.
- noir_lord 8y agoIn some ways the ones who've mastered a field can be worse, they assume that mastery of an esoteric field translates to mastery of everything. Tech is pretty bad for that. I try hard to avoid that trap, we seem to live in a world where experts are undervalued and loud confident sounding people are listened to. It's frustrating since people like simple answers and the loud confident ones are happy to pretend to give them.
- logifail 8y ago>> we seem to live in a world where experts are undervalued and loud confident sounding people are listened to "loud confident sounding people" is fairly self-evident Can you share your definition of "expert", please? :) The former get a lot of airplay (here and elsewhere). Finding the latter appears to be a whole lot harder.
- ridgeguy 8y ago>What? Agreed. See Theranos.