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I really hate this mind set. Every single human being that ever lived is a ridiculously intelligent entity. It isn’t funny or cute to pretend otherwise and ju

I really hate this mind set. Every single human being that ever lived is a ridiculously intelligent entity. It isn’t funny or cute to pretend otherwise and just because some people dedicate that intelligence to things you or I don’t agree with, or just because they don’t care about the same things as us, doesn’t make them less self aware than any other person.

snek_case 5y ago
Disagree. Some people are less self-aware than others. It's not a matter of opinions or what you believe in, it's a matter of how much you are aware of your own cognition. There are many people out there who seem to lack the ability to analyze the consequences of their behavior, or to admit that they were ever wrong. There are also people who seem to be very bad at understanding what are their motivations for doing certain things. Not being able to look back at your own behavior and your own mistakes makes it nearly impossible for these people to grow. I won't get into the argument as to whether these differences in self-awareness are biological in origin or due to nurture. It's probably some of both. Either way, even though this metric is multidimensional and hard to quantify, some people are definitely less self-aware than others. Just like some people are less physically fit than others.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  How do you distinguish between the case where these people are actually less self aware vs being roughly just as self aware but having different values from your own? In other words, they are aware of much of what everyone around them is aware, they just act on it differently? In any case, the vast majority of healthy humans are probably more self aware than the vast majority of healthy crows, no?
- edgyquant 5y ago
  You seem to think these people stupid instead of stubborn humans who don’t care about what your definition of “self aware” is. I’m sure these people think your way of thinking is odd as well.
  - snek_case 5y ago
    I think it's similar to short term reward vs delayed gratification (see the marshmallow experiment[0]). By refusing to admit you've ever made mistakes, you can protect your ego in the short term. However, you're also alienating people and preventing learning from taking place. That has a long-term cost in terms of missed or lost opportunities. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
jotm 5y ago
It is entirely possible to simply ignore that intelligence. And why wouldn't you, if you're safe and fed? Being stupid is easier - very much in line with evolution, too. It's hard not to notice that many people are... dumb, but content or happy. They don't second guess, they don't fret, they don't think much. I really wish I could be like that.
- Jach 5y ago
  Why wouldn't you? Smarter people are generally happier than others too when the question is researched. I suppose it's possible to mistake low neuroticism for stupidity. And if you don't talk to dumb people (pick an IQ range below 100) very often you might not know their worries and concerns, especially if they're not overt about them as is fashionable for Lisa Simpson-esque individuals. Still bad news on adjusting your base intelligence (apart from drastically down through damage), I don't know about adjusting self-awareness though I suspect it's a bit more mutable in good and bad ways (if only because related traits better understood are more mutable), but at least your desire to feel happier or more content more often is a possible state for you to achieve if you work at it. Some people will recommend therapy (surprised nobody has internet-diagnosed you with depression already), or meditation, or philosophy, or drugs (prescription or party), or whatever (I like the idea and research of gratitude journals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal but don't keep one), I don't want to recommend anything, just point out that personality and outlook is more mutable than something like base intelligence, which is good news for your melancholy should you wish to attempt change.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    Are “smart” people happier? I see lots of people claiming the exact opposite (usually in reference to themselves ofc) but have never bothered to see if it’s a real study or something.
    - Jach 5y ago
      Here's a cite: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/relationship-between-happiness-and-intelligent-quotient-the-contribution-of-socioeconomic-and-clinical-factors/852640AC984DB7EC623D9D2C1A2D0A5A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici... Of course it's not the only thing, and can be greatly mediated by other factors. From the book Age of Em, citing that and other sources, "people today tend to be both happier and more productive when they have jobs, autonomy at work, health, beauty, money, marriage, religion, intelligence, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and non-neuroticism." I brought up Lisa Simpson because there's this meme: https://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lisa-simpson-graph1.jpg https://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lisa-simp... It's a popular take, but it's wrong.
clankyclanker 5y ago
> ridiculously intelligent entity Intelligence is a far-cry from self-awareness. I once knew someone who would regularly (daily, for years), in conversation, cut other people off like they weren't even there to completely change the subject to their own preference. I once called them out on it and tried to finish my original point to the rest of the table. They yelled at me and demanded an apology that I would dare cut them off like that, that I would dare try to finish my own point. I have several similar stories, but the rest are far too specific for the open internet. Some people just pay themselves no mind.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Read some of Peter Watts SF to see that there can be a distinction between self awareness, consciousness, and intelligence.
z3c0 5y ago
You're not alone in this. I find it a very tired, unoriginal perspective to keep asserting how dumb other people are. At the end of the day, the simplest human brains are still a marvel of science and computational complexity. The fact that it so often gets used for "dumb" things only impresses me more. Unfortunately, a lot of people boost their worth by degrading others, so to give that credit to those that they look down on would cause them a certain degree of cognitive dissonance.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  This comment is a bit ironic. Particularly your last sentence.
  - z3c0 5y ago
    Only if you assume that I look down on those I'm speaking of. I don't. It's an entirely human thing to do, and something most people will find themselves doing at some point.
Jach 5y ago
I've gone back and forth on my feelings for the mindset. My current feelings just encompass the differences so it's not really a like or hate anymore either way. Yes, the human species is very intelligent and in a uniquely general way on this planet, the difference between a village idiot and Einstein is quite small compared to the difference between a village idiot and any member of any other species. Scenarios like Idiocracy are just laughably implausible because while evolution can sometimes work fast for little changes which can make a difference against big selection pressures, it's generally very slow (we have math to say how slow!), and it seems plausible that what makes us uniquely generally intelligent took evolution a long time to produce, has many interdependent and complicated things, and would take evolution a long time to unmake. I suspect we as a species would sooner go extinct for one reason or another before we suffered enough mutations that reached fixation and caused a notable decline in our capability of general intelligence. On the other hand, small scale situations similar to what's depicted in fun-fiction like Idiocracy or other things keep happening, and the idea that reality is stranger and crazier than fiction holds true. I've joked that the 2020s are going to be the dumbest decade, and will require the dumbest people. Holding up well so far. Furthermore, even if we acknowledge that humans are intelligent, period, there is still great variation within humans. There is variation on every trait we can measure, self-awareness should be no different, the presumption that no one is more or less self aware than any other person defies reason. Apart from that, just observing people's behavior in a casual way I think it obvious that people vary quite a bit when it comes to self-awareness, both in general every day lives (which I can notice varies in myself) or in specific focused tests. It doesn't get better when you switch from casual observation and conversation to more detailed study, psychology and psychotherapy are full of strange and fascinating data (and not just of fundamentally damaged brains) which I think a model that assumes equal capacities in self-awareness would be hard-pressed to explain.

snek_case 5y ago

Disagree. Some people are less self-aware than others. It's not a matter of opinions or what you believe in, it's a matter of how much you are aware of your own cognition. There are many people out there who seem to lack the ability to analyze the consequences of their behavior, or to admit that they were ever wrong. There are also people who seem to be very bad at understanding what are their motivations for doing certain things. Not being able to look back at your own behavior and your own mistakes makes it nearly impossible for these people to grow. I won't get into the argument as to whether these differences in self-awareness are biological in origin or due to nurture. It's probably some of both. Either way, even though this metric is multidimensional and hard to quantify, some people are definitely less self-aware than others. Just like some people are less physically fit than others.

ifyoubuildit 5y ago
How do you distinguish between the case where these people are actually less self aware vs being roughly just as self aware but having different values from your own? In other words, they are aware of much of what everyone around them is aware, they just act on it differently? In any case, the vast majority of healthy humans are probably more self aware than the vast majority of healthy crows, no?
edgyquant 5y ago
You seem to think these people stupid instead of stubborn humans who don’t care about what your definition of “self aware” is. I’m sure these people think your way of thinking is odd as well.
- snek_case 5y ago
  I think it's similar to short term reward vs delayed gratification (see the marshmallow experiment[0]). By refusing to admit you've ever made mistakes, you can protect your ego in the short term. However, you're also alienating people and preventing learning from taking place. That has a long-term cost in terms of missed or lost opportunities. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...

jotm 5y ago

It is entirely possible to simply ignore that intelligence. And why wouldn't you, if you're safe and fed? Being stupid is easier - very much in line with evolution, too. It's hard not to notice that many people are... dumb, but content or happy. They don't second guess, they don't fret, they don't think much. I really wish I could be like that.

Jach 5y ago
Why wouldn't you? Smarter people are generally happier than others too when the question is researched. I suppose it's possible to mistake low neuroticism for stupidity. And if you don't talk to dumb people (pick an IQ range below 100) very often you might not know their worries and concerns, especially if they're not overt about them as is fashionable for Lisa Simpson-esque individuals. Still bad news on adjusting your base intelligence (apart from drastically down through damage), I don't know about adjusting self-awareness though I suspect it's a bit more mutable in good and bad ways (if only because related traits better understood are more mutable), but at least your desire to feel happier or more content more often is a possible state for you to achieve if you work at it. Some people will recommend therapy (surprised nobody has internet-diagnosed you with depression already), or meditation, or philosophy, or drugs (prescription or party), or whatever (I like the idea and research of gratitude journals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal but don't keep one), I don't want to recommend anything, just point out that personality and outlook is more mutable than something like base intelligence, which is good news for your melancholy should you wish to attempt change.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Are “smart” people happier? I see lots of people claiming the exact opposite (usually in reference to themselves ofc) but have never bothered to see if it’s a real study or something.
  - Jach 5y ago
    Here's a cite: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/relationship-between-happiness-and-intelligent-quotient-the-contribution-of-socioeconomic-and-clinical-factors/852640AC984DB7EC623D9D2C1A2D0A5A https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici... Of course it's not the only thing, and can be greatly mediated by other factors. From the book Age of Em, citing that and other sources, "people today tend to be both happier and more productive when they have jobs, autonomy at work, health, beauty, money, marriage, religion, intelligence, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and non-neuroticism." I brought up Lisa Simpson because there's this meme: https://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lisa-simpson-graph1.jpg https://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/lisa-simp... It's a popular take, but it's wrong.

clankyclanker 5y ago

> ridiculously intelligent entity Intelligence is a far-cry from self-awareness. I once knew someone who would regularly (daily, for years), in conversation, cut other people off like they weren't even there to completely change the subject to their own preference. I once called them out on it and tried to finish my original point to the rest of the table. They yelled at me and demanded an apology that I would dare cut them off like that, that I would dare try to finish my own point. I have several similar stories, but the rest are far too specific for the open internet. Some people just pay themselves no mind.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

Read some of Peter Watts SF to see that there can be a distinction between self awareness, consciousness, and intelligence.

z3c0 5y ago

You're not alone in this. I find it a very tired, unoriginal perspective to keep asserting how dumb other people are. At the end of the day, the simplest human brains are still a marvel of science and computational complexity. The fact that it so often gets used for "dumb" things only impresses me more. Unfortunately, a lot of people boost their worth by degrading others, so to give that credit to those that they look down on would cause them a certain degree of cognitive dissonance.

elliekelly 5y ago
This comment is a bit ironic. Particularly your last sentence.
- z3c0 5y ago
  Only if you assume that I look down on those I'm speaking of. I don't. It's an entirely human thing to do, and something most people will find themselves doing at some point.

Jach 5y ago

I've gone back and forth on my feelings for the mindset. My current feelings just encompass the differences so it's not really a like or hate anymore either way. Yes, the human species is very intelligent and in a uniquely general way on this planet, the difference between a village idiot and Einstein is quite small compared to the difference between a village idiot and any member of any other species. Scenarios like Idiocracy are just laughably implausible because while evolution can sometimes work fast for little changes which can make a difference against big selection pressures, it's generally very slow (we have math to say how slow!), and it seems plausible that what makes us uniquely generally intelligent took evolution a long time to produce, has many interdependent and complicated things, and would take evolution a long time to unmake. I suspect we as a species would sooner go extinct for one reason or another before we suffered enough mutations that reached fixation and caused a notable decline in our capability of general intelligence. On the other hand, small scale situations similar to what's depicted in fun-fiction like Idiocracy or other things keep happening, and the idea that reality is stranger and crazier than fiction holds true. I've joked that the 2020s are going to be the dumbest decade, and will require the dumbest people. Holding up well so far. Furthermore, even if we acknowledge that humans are intelligent, period, there is still great variation within humans. There is variation on every trait we can measure, self-awareness should be no different, the presumption that no one is more or less self aware than any other person defies reason. Apart from that, just observing people's behavior in a casual way I think it obvious that people vary quite a bit when it comes to self-awareness, both in general every day lives (which I can notice varies in myself) or in specific focused tests. It doesn't get better when you switch from casual observation and conversation to more detailed study, psychology and psychotherapy are full of strange and fascinating data (and not just of fundamentally damaged brains) which I think a model that assumes equal capacities in self-awareness would be hard-pressed to explain.