6 ms·

It reads like a 1000 word humblebrag.

by bitreality 7y ago

zarathustraa 7y ago
Success is a social construct. Intelligence is a social construct.
- camdenlock 7y ago
  Those are staggeringly enormous claims. Got any scientific evidence?
  - zarathustraa 7y ago
    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15426432.2016.1229149 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15426432.2016.1...
    - camdenlock 7y ago
      This paper already assumes that success is a social construct, and so it is not evidence of the kind you’d need to substantiate your initial enormous claims. From the very first part of the abstract: “[...] the literature has not fully explored distinctions between the ways leaders of these organizations socially construct success, [...]”
  - renlo 7y ago
    Just for argument’s sake, my opinion is that intelligence is a kind of social construct. What we view as “intelligence” is the manifestation of traits that are important for our current society to function. i.e, we value bridges, so the traits of bridge builders are viewed as positive traits, which we call “intelligence”. In other environments these traits might not be seen as intelligent. For example, from what I’ve gleaned from reading books written a hundred or so years ago, “intelligence” could only be possessed by members of the upper classes, so even if you could build bridges, if you weren’t born into a certain class you were seen as mentally inferior. So our definition of intelligence shifts over time based on whatever society deems as important.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ralusek 7y ago
      Our definition of intelligence continues to refine itself to be a highly generalizable aptitude for certain abstract skills. Your example of equating intelligence with wealth or bridge building is not even close to how intelligence is measured. It will be measured in dimensions like long term memory, working memory, pattern recognition, rotation of visual space, strategy/problem solving. And these abilities invariably dictate how people will be able to learn or perform at things like bridge building or software engineering. You will never be an exceptional software engineer if you cannot keep a suitably sized problem space in working memory. It's so frustrating to me that we keep regressing our political conversations with assertions of this nature, that intelligence is a social construction, when in doing so we are literally turning a blind eye to what is arguably one of the greatest injustices our society faces. Intelligence is not a social construction, and it's not distributed equitably, and that isn't fair. It's the single greatest psychological signifier for material success. I'd much rather accept reality as it is, and spend resources attempting to ameliorate objective injustices, rather than making assertions that intelligence is a social construction because it gives some opening for a utopian alternative that can simply dispense with our "oppressive conceptions of competence."
      - renlo 7y ago
        I agree with you, believe it or not, what I was referring to was “our definition of intelligence” (edit: ie, the collection of traits we see as “ingelligent”), not the underlying traits.
      - astazangasta 7y ago
        >Our definition of intelligence continues to refine itself to be a highly generalizable aptitude for certain abstract skills. This is exactly what social construction is: reifying a set of observations into an abstract notion. Intelligence is a social construction.
      - erikpukinskis 7y ago
  - astazangasta 7y ago
    Claiming success is a social construct seems to me to be trivially true, not a staggering claim. Intelligence is less obvious since there is a vast literature around it, but, again, it is clearly a social construct; we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct. I'm also not sure what "scientific evidence" would look like here. You seem to have had some sort of allergic reaction to the assertion of social construction and retreated instinctively to familiar but hollow epistemic grounds.
    - Retra 7y ago
      >we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct. This makes everything a social construct, which negates any usefulness of the distinction. Having to agree to definitions cannot be a realistic definition of social construct, because it's a basic part of using language.
      - astazangasta 7y ago
        Yes? And? This is one of the most profound and basic observations of twentieth century philosophy. That is what social construction is, it underlies our basic notions of perception and reality. Read this book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_Reality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_R...
        Retra 7y ago
        What you've said is not profound. When you go around saying "the sky is blue" people aren't wrong to assume you meant something relevant, rather than just tossing out vague and trivial statements.
        astazangasta 7y ago
        I'm not sure what to do with this remark. You said my definition of social construction was untenable because the implications were too broad and you seemed to find that frightening. I responded by saying that social construction IS a theory with broad implications and gave you a reference to read, since you seem to be unfamiliar with these concepts. Your response seems a non sequitur.
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  Shared reality is a social construct
DoreenMichele 7y ago
I skimmed it. It's not a particularly compelling piece, but research supports the idea that praising kids for "being smart" is inherently problematic. Furthermore, she's a woman in a man's world. Women tend to spend a great deal of their time performing unpaid labor in the form of raising children and running the household -- aka "women's work." This creates myriad problems in them trying to establish a public reputation. I was a military wife and homeschooling mom for a lot of years. I've really struggled to create some kind of public reputation that will lead to adequate financial compensation, so it's a problem space I know a lot about. Women are constantly put in a double bind when it comes to trying to claim their competence, establish a public life, etc.
- fromthestart 7y ago
  >unpaid labor in the form of raising children and running the household What a backwards society we increasingly live in, where putting time and effort into one of the most rewarding aspects of life, tending to the success and well-being of your offspring, is dismissed as "unpaid labor." >Women are constantly put in a double bind when it comes to trying to claim their competence, establish a public life, etc. Maybe that's because they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. The choice to leave the breadwinning to the male and become the primary caregiver is ultimately a male one in today's heavily pro-female corporate climate.
  - astazangasta 7y ago
    I'm guessing you are not a parent. I have a toddler and a one month old. It is rewarding in many ways, but it is also crushingly boring, repetitive work. It's also overwhelmingly placed on women; men simply don't do as much child care by a factor of probably ten. I'm pretty sure no woman is trying to have her cake here, and every single one would choose to have help so they could do anything else on occasion.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      before we had children my dream was to work part time so i could spend a lot of time with my children. when we had children, i got that opportunity, because my wife got a good paying job and i was a struggling freelancer. and i hated it. it was boring, unfulfilling, and i didn't feel that i got enough time to work (which was where i'd seek that fulfillment) when working, my wife often talks about how she'd like to stay home to take care of the kids, but since i work from home i know that she also feels unfulfilled if she is not at work. we are fortunate that we live in a country where having a nanny is common and socially acceptable (means, it's not considered a rich peoples privilege), (most often it's a relative like the kids grandparents). i eventually developed a theory that men are really privileged to live in a society where it is acceptable for them to leave this work to their partner.
steve_adams_86 7y ago
In my experience, people who grew up under pressure to perform and with frequent external validation of their intelligence tend to humble brag a lot. I wonder if it's simply because they're mirroring what people have done to them. I grew up with something much different and find the bragging repulsive, but perhaps that's an expression of my own insecurity or jealousy to a degree.

It reads like a 1000 word humblebrag.

zarathustraa 7y ago

Success is a social construct. Intelligence is a social construct.

camdenlock 7y ago
Those are staggeringly enormous claims. Got any scientific evidence?
- zarathustraa 7y ago
  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15426432.2016.1229149 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15426432.2016.1...
  - camdenlock 7y ago
    This paper already assumes that success is a social construct, and so it is not evidence of the kind you’d need to substantiate your initial enormous claims. From the very first part of the abstract: “[...] the literature has not fully explored distinctions between the ways leaders of these organizations socially construct success, [...]”
- renlo 7y ago
  Just for argument’s sake, my opinion is that intelligence is a kind of social construct. What we view as “intelligence” is the manifestation of traits that are important for our current society to function. i.e, we value bridges, so the traits of bridge builders are viewed as positive traits, which we call “intelligence”. In other environments these traits might not be seen as intelligent. For example, from what I’ve gleaned from reading books written a hundred or so years ago, “intelligence” could only be possessed by members of the upper classes, so even if you could build bridges, if you weren’t born into a certain class you were seen as mentally inferior. So our definition of intelligence shifts over time based on whatever society deems as important.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ralusek 7y ago
    Our definition of intelligence continues to refine itself to be a highly generalizable aptitude for certain abstract skills. Your example of equating intelligence with wealth or bridge building is not even close to how intelligence is measured. It will be measured in dimensions like long term memory, working memory, pattern recognition, rotation of visual space, strategy/problem solving. And these abilities invariably dictate how people will be able to learn or perform at things like bridge building or software engineering. You will never be an exceptional software engineer if you cannot keep a suitably sized problem space in working memory. It's so frustrating to me that we keep regressing our political conversations with assertions of this nature, that intelligence is a social construction, when in doing so we are literally turning a blind eye to what is arguably one of the greatest injustices our society faces. Intelligence is not a social construction, and it's not distributed equitably, and that isn't fair. It's the single greatest psychological signifier for material success. I'd much rather accept reality as it is, and spend resources attempting to ameliorate objective injustices, rather than making assertions that intelligence is a social construction because it gives some opening for a utopian alternative that can simply dispense with our "oppressive conceptions of competence."
    - renlo 7y ago
      I agree with you, believe it or not, what I was referring to was “our definition of intelligence” (edit: ie, the collection of traits we see as “ingelligent”), not the underlying traits.
    - astazangasta 7y ago
      >Our definition of intelligence continues to refine itself to be a highly generalizable aptitude for certain abstract skills. This is exactly what social construction is: reifying a set of observations into an abstract notion. Intelligence is a social construction.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
- astazangasta 7y ago
  Claiming success is a social construct seems to me to be trivially true, not a staggering claim. Intelligence is less obvious since there is a vast literature around it, but, again, it is clearly a social construct; we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct. I'm also not sure what "scientific evidence" would look like here. You seem to have had some sort of allergic reaction to the assertion of social construction and retreated instinctively to familiar but hollow epistemic grounds.
  - Retra 7y ago
    >we must struggle to agree on a useful definition of intelligence, therefore it is a social construct. This makes everything a social construct, which negates any usefulness of the distinction. Having to agree to definitions cannot be a realistic definition of social construct, because it's a basic part of using language.
    - astazangasta 7y ago
      Yes? And? This is one of the most profound and basic observations of twentieth century philosophy. That is what social construction is, it underlies our basic notions of perception and reality. Read this book: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_Reality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Construction_of_R...
      - Retra 7y ago
        What you've said is not profound. When you go around saying "the sky is blue" people aren't wrong to assume you meant something relevant, rather than just tossing out vague and trivial statements.
        astazangasta 7y ago
        I'm not sure what to do with this remark. You said my definition of social construction was untenable because the implications were too broad and you seemed to find that frightening. I responded by saying that social construction IS a theory with broad implications and gave you a reference to read, since you seem to be unfamiliar with these concepts. Your response seems a non sequitur.
noobiemcfoob 7y ago
Shared reality is a social construct

DoreenMichele 7y ago

I skimmed it. It's not a particularly compelling piece, but research supports the idea that praising kids for "being smart" is inherently problematic. Furthermore, she's a woman in a man's world. Women tend to spend a great deal of their time performing unpaid labor in the form of raising children and running the household -- aka "women's work." This creates myriad problems in them trying to establish a public reputation. I was a military wife and homeschooling mom for a lot of years. I've really struggled to create some kind of public reputation that will lead to adequate financial compensation, so it's a problem space I know a lot about. Women are constantly put in a double bind when it comes to trying to claim their competence, establish a public life, etc.

fromthestart 7y ago
>unpaid labor in the form of raising children and running the household What a backwards society we increasingly live in, where putting time and effort into one of the most rewarding aspects of life, tending to the success and well-being of your offspring, is dismissed as "unpaid labor." >Women are constantly put in a double bind when it comes to trying to claim their competence, establish a public life, etc. Maybe that's because they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. The choice to leave the breadwinning to the male and become the primary caregiver is ultimately a male one in today's heavily pro-female corporate climate.
- astazangasta 7y ago
  I'm guessing you are not a parent. I have a toddler and a one month old. It is rewarding in many ways, but it is also crushingly boring, repetitive work. It's also overwhelmingly placed on women; men simply don't do as much child care by a factor of probably ten. I'm pretty sure no woman is trying to have her cake here, and every single one would choose to have help so they could do anything else on occasion.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    before we had children my dream was to work part time so i could spend a lot of time with my children. when we had children, i got that opportunity, because my wife got a good paying job and i was a struggling freelancer. and i hated it. it was boring, unfulfilling, and i didn't feel that i got enough time to work (which was where i'd seek that fulfillment) when working, my wife often talks about how she'd like to stay home to take care of the kids, but since i work from home i know that she also feels unfulfilled if she is not at work. we are fortunate that we live in a country where having a nanny is common and socially acceptable (means, it's not considered a rich peoples privilege), (most often it's a relative like the kids grandparents). i eventually developed a theory that men are really privileged to live in a society where it is acceptable for them to leave this work to their partner.

steve_adams_86 7y ago

In my experience, people who grew up under pressure to perform and with frequent external validation of their intelligence tend to humble brag a lot. I wonder if it's simply because they're mirroring what people have done to them. I grew up with something much different and find the bragging repulsive, but perhaps that's an expression of my own insecurity or jealousy to a degree.