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My impression is that, among humans, there is a somewhat positive correlation between intelligence and benevolent behavior. (But I would expect the tails to co

by drdeca 4y ago

My impression is that, among humans, there is a somewhat positive correlation between intelligence and benevolent behavior. (But I would expect the tails to come apart somewhat. Also, among non-human minds I wouldn’t necessarily expect this to show the same pattern.)

JohnBooty 4y ago
I don't know if I've found that to be the case. I've known a lot of high IQ types that were fundamentally pretty bad people, or more often just sort of innocuously sociopathic. I don't find them to be a better-than-average class of person. I think the key here is that we all have different definitions of "benevolent." An awful lot of hate crimes have been committed in the history of the human race in the name of making things better. Almost nobody thinks that they are the bad guy. I hate to jump right to Godwin's Law here, but a lot of Nazis thought they were doing the right thing. Ridding the world of "undesirables" and so on was their (twisted, wrong) idea of bettering the world. One thing smart people are undeniably better at is coming up with grand justifications for their crappy actions and then proceed to buy into their own bullshit. Think of how a skilled lawyer or rhetorician can construct a convincing one-sided argument in favor of almost any damn thing. Dumb people can be shitheads too but only the smart shitheads will write a freaking manifesto about it.
- drdeca 4y ago
  I just meant some correlation, not necessarily a particularly strong one. I didn’t mean to suggest that there are no people who are both highly intelligent and also completely vile.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    I definitely took it to mean that it was a (perhaps small) positive correlation and not an immutable law, but maaan. At this point in my life I might think it's even a negative correlation. I'd like to think that a benevolent sort of mutualism is kind of an obvious higher truth. I certainly believe in it. If we work together there will be more for everybody. Very few things in life are truly zero-sum. And I think for most of human history, things worked this way. In a small family/village/tribe, cooperation was essential, and there was probably a pretty strong evolutionary preference for those that were benevolent rather than evil, at least towards their own family/village/tribe. Smarter people would understand this better. Help your neighbor out, and he'll help you out, and maybe nobody has to get eaten by a bear. But no more. Groups are so big now. There's no obvious personal benefit to being a "good person." If you act like a dick in a small village then maybe you die next winter because the grain never gets harvested and everybody starves. But in modern society, there's just not much of a penalty for being a dick.

by drdeca 4y ago

JohnBooty 4y ago

I don't know if I've found that to be the case. I've known a lot of high IQ types that were fundamentally pretty bad people, or more often just sort of innocuously sociopathic. I don't find them to be a better-than-average class of person. I think the key here is that we all have different definitions of "benevolent." An awful lot of hate crimes have been committed in the history of the human race in the name of making things better. Almost nobody thinks that they are the bad guy. I hate to jump right to Godwin's Law here, but a lot of Nazis thought they were doing the right thing. Ridding the world of "undesirables" and so on was their (twisted, wrong) idea of bettering the world. One thing smart people are undeniably better at is coming up with grand justifications for their crappy actions and then proceed to buy into their own bullshit. Think of how a skilled lawyer or rhetorician can construct a convincing one-sided argument in favor of almost any damn thing. Dumb people can be shitheads too but only the smart shitheads will write a freaking manifesto about it.

drdeca 4y ago
I just meant some correlation, not necessarily a particularly strong one. I didn’t mean to suggest that there are no people who are both highly intelligent and also completely vile.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  I definitely took it to mean that it was a (perhaps small) positive correlation and not an immutable law, but maaan. At this point in my life I might think it's even a negative correlation. I'd like to think that a benevolent sort of mutualism is kind of an obvious higher truth. I certainly believe in it. If we work together there will be more for everybody. Very few things in life are truly zero-sum. And I think for most of human history, things worked this way. In a small family/village/tribe, cooperation was essential, and there was probably a pretty strong evolutionary preference for those that were benevolent rather than evil, at least towards their own family/village/tribe. Smarter people would understand this better. Help your neighbor out, and he'll help you out, and maybe nobody has to get eaten by a bear. But no more. Groups are so big now. There's no obvious personal benefit to being a "good person." If you act like a dick in a small village then maybe you die next winter because the grain never gets harvested and everybody starves. But in modern society, there's just not much of a penalty for being a dick.