3 ms·

I'd be curious to know the average IQ of, say, climate deniers. I suspect it's still a perfect 100. I don't think it's about general intelligence. In some ways

by jfengel 7mo ago

I'd be curious to know the average IQ of, say, climate deniers. I suspect it's still a perfect 100. I don't think it's about general intelligence. In some ways just the opposite: very smart people have a talent for convincing themselves that they are right. Unfortunately I fear it's more like EQ than IQ. The driver is more about the people. They do not like the kind of people who are trying to prevent climate change, and will apply their intelligence as hard as they can to avoid agreeing with them.

wombat-man 7mo ago
Yes, it's hard for some to believe, but there are people in my family who are otherwise very intelligent but will not change their opinions on some things. Like climate change.
- semiquaver 7mo ago
  Unless you are a scientist directly engaging with the literature, you and your relative are both doing the same thing: trusting the opinion of peers and high-status people in your political clan about what is happening in the world. It just happens that people in your clan are telling the truth while the other one is lying. Neither side’s behavior can be considered “more intelligent” when you consider the vast majority of people on both sides are “opinion-takers” simply conforming to received social norms about what to believe about the world. The “opinion-makers” on both sides are undoubtedly intelligent, although you might prefer to call one side “cunning” instead.
  - catapart 7mo ago
    you don't have to be a scientist to directly engage with the literature. from mathematical proofs to directly observed phenomena to statistical certainties - it's all out there for you to engage with and feel secure in your findings just by having an internet connection. there's a qualitative difference in that evidence from the "sides" and therefore there is a qualitative and practical difference in the "more intelligent" side. "truth" is not incidental to the situation, it's the entire point of making claims at all. So a side that is making claims that turn out to not be true - whether you personally verify that or not - is a worse side, intellectually, than another.
    - whamlastxmas 7mo ago
      If the side you follow says the science community is political and biased, then "just look at the literature" isn't going to help. It's like telling an atheist they'd believe in Jesus if they'd just read the bible. We are lied to constantly by people who influence our lives. You can't even go to the grocery store without being lied to - being told breakfast cereals are healthy, that low fat options will make you less fat, shrinkflation, misleading unit pricing. It's no wonder people are so distrusting Even if you're a democrat you still have to admit that democrats lie, a ton, and it's super obvious. Maybe if our leadership in general, on both sides, was capable of being decent humans then we'd be able to build trust and stop doing dumb shit as a civilization
      - anonymars 7mo ago
        Unfortunately at some level, as usual, it comes down to game theory If you tell the nuanced truth and lose, and your opponent tells simplified untruths and wins, where does that leave you? As I understand it (obviously a gross simplification), Jimmy Carter attempted to treat Americans like adults, but Americans did not want to inconvenience themselves by wearing sweaters
      - catapart 7mo ago
        please engage in good faith. if you think mathematical proofs will be an issue when I tell someone to "look at the literature", you either don't know what a mathematical proof is, or are too far abstracted from reality to influence any practical action. yes, we're being lied to. no, they don't fuck up the science in order to lie to you. they just expect you not to read the science. because, truthfully, it's rare that the people who are lying to you would even know how to fuck up the science in their favor. so they bet on your ignorance, based on their ignorance, and they usually win the bet. but not if you just go look it up and engage with it. it's not about reading a single paper; it's about always reading every paper (on topics you have decided you are going to have an opinion about) with a keen and unshakeable focus on practical effect. anything else is an academic boondoggle.
    - numitus 7mo ago
      That’s a pretty weak argument. What percentage of people actually have the qualifications to understand and verify a research paper? And how much can you even trust the raw data? At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of faith—whether you choose to believe the guy in the church or the guy at the university.
  - hamasho 7mo ago
    I think choosing reliable authority requires a little intelligence. I don’t know how to build a robust house, but I can understand that should be on the solid base (scientific method) upon stable field, instead of mysterious objects from thousand years ago.
  - whamlastxmas 7mo ago
    I really love the way you communicated this and wish HN posters could more routinely invite curious conversations like this. Which isn't to say I'm perfect at it either
- belorn 7mo ago
  Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. Those actions involve contested subjects like economical aspects (both national and global), fairness among population demographics, historical fairness (such as indigenous populations), border politics and wars, as well as what methods and technology is scientifically proven to be effective measures. Denialism in this aspect is very broad concept, and if we define it that anyone who disagree with the politician actions are idiots, and everyone who agree with them are intelligent, then a large portion of people will be idiots even if a large number of them are very intelligent in other areas.
  - vkou 7mo ago
    > Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. It would be great if what you said is true, and people were just arguing about what to do about it. It's not, though. "It's a hoax" is both the start, and the end point for a large portion of the population, the media, and the politicians that represent it.
    - belorn 7mo ago
      How would you know if its a large portion of the population if media and politicians label people deniers just because they have a difference in opinion about what actions should be done? In absolute terms, the portion of the worlds population that deny that the climate is changing is a single digit percentage, and that include the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_climate_chan...). The portion is a bit larger if you include people who think that the climate is changing but that is mostly caused by natural causes, but it is still a small minority compared to the wast majority that see climate change as either caused exclusively by human activity or as a mix between human activity and natural causes. The "It's all a hoax" is a popular talking point but their followers are fewer in real life. It much more commonly to find that people with opposing view who actually agreeing that climate change is real, but that they disagree on policy. As an example, creating environmental policy based on per capita create a complete different policy compared to absolute emissions. The later is no more climate change denial than the first, and yet the later generally get labeled as denial.
- mmmmmbop 7mo ago
  In Germany, for many years we had been told that climate change is the most important thing ever, that we need to change our habits or else the world will go down, that if we don't act now, we will all be doomed. Then the Ukraine war happened, and suddenly nobody was talking about climate change anymore. I'll admit, I'm a simple man and I don't know the science behind all of this. But as a citizen, it does feel confusing how one day you're being told that we're all going to die unless we change something, and then suddenly even though nothing changed, it seems to be fine after all.
  - Timon3 7mo ago
    Plenty of people in Germany (on all social/political levels) still talk about climate change, and have done so without pause before, during and since Ukraine. If you think that everything "seems to be fine after all", you're in for a very rude awakening.
    - mmmmmbop 7mo ago
      Is that your perception, or do you have data to back this up? For context, here's one source saying public concern for climate change has fallen in Germany from 42% to 34% from 2022 to 2025, in line with other European countries. [0] This was a study done by a German sustainability non-profit. Here's another source stating that globally, news coverage about climate change has diminished by 38% from 2021 to 2025. [1] Here's a third source stating that the share of German citizens who claim to be "very concerned" about climate change has dropped from 50% to 33% from 2019 to 2025. [2] [0] https://fsc.org/en/newscentre/general-news/climate-change-falls-over-20-behind-top-global-concern-in-2025-new-ipsos https://fsc.org/en/newscentre/general-news/climate-change-fa... [1] https://mecco.colorado.edu/summaries/special_issue_2025.html https://mecco.colorado.edu/summaries/special_issue_2025.html [2] https://carbon-pulse.com/482517/#entry-482802 https://carbon-pulse.com/482517/#entry-482802
      - Timon3 7mo ago
        Seems like you've answered your own question.
jstanley 7mo ago
100 is not a perfect score on an IQ test! 100 is the mean score. It's not a percentage.
- sebastianmestre 7mo ago
  I don't think that's what the GP was going for... rather, implying that flat-eartherness is uncorrelated to IQ and, thus, the average IQ of flat-earthers is the same as that of the general population.
  - jfengel 7mo ago
    Flerfers seem to be a somewhat different problem. In my experience, the vast majority of flat earthers are trolls, pretending to be stupid for the purpose of angering people. I'm sure there are some genuine flat earthers out there, and I imagine that their IQs do average near 100 (perhaps a little lower). But I'm basing that on a general understanding of how people come to stupid beliefs, rather than from observations of individuals, because I'm not sure I've ever met a flat earther who actually believed what he was saying.
everdrive 7mo ago
A lot of beliefs are cultural and not directly related to intelligence. From an outsider's perspective, it can be difficult to tell which beliefs are merely fact-based and which are rooted in culture. I think an important thought experiment here would be to really imagine people going to war, killing each other over whether or not biblical transubstantiation is literal or metaphorical. who had the "intelligent" belief in this case? I'd argue neither side and that this was pure tribalism.
everdrive 7mo ago
One other thing that's interesting -- at least in my personal observations, climate deniers don't usually actually argue the science. They might do this when publishing or speaking publicly. But, at least when you're talking with them and they're at ease and speaking freely, they seem to offer a different argument. The argument I've seen, which really sticks with me, is that climate change is false, yes, but that's sort of a given that we don't investigate. Climate change was cooked up so that "the other side" could impose all sorts of horrible restrictions on "us." I obviously don't agree with the argument, (ie, I think climate change is real and quite urgent) but I think it's an interesting framing. It's an argument from tribalism most obviously, but I also think it does what so many people do when attempting to understand complex events; it transforms the problem into more of a personal drama. The "real issue" is that "those people" are "against us." You see this sort of framing all the time; complex problems boiled down into personal dramas because people intuitively understand personal dramas and seek them out, but not necessarily because a personal drama has the best explanatory power.
- eszed 7mo ago
  This exactly is what drew in my late father, who was a scientist (not climate, obviously!) with raw intelligence several standard deviations above average. "They" were using climate change as a stalking horse for communism / woke-ism / whatever other "big government" thing he thought was counter to the interests of people like him. He wasn't always like that. Maybe he wouldn't have described himself as such at the time, but in his twenties and early thirties he was a Liberal. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, attended Civil Rights marches, advocated on behalf of gay people, argued for gender equality, strongly opposed the Vietnam War, and was appalled by Watergate. Fast-forward to the last decade of his life, in which my father donated to all three Trump presidential campaigns, displayed a Gadsden flag on his mantle, rejected his trans-gender grandchild, and made (at the very least) replacement-theory adjacent noises. Oh, and preferred Ivermectin over covid vaccination, of course. What I think happened was that he was culturally out of step with most people who otherwise shared his politics in the 1970s - he was religious, so viscerally disgusted by drug use and "extra-marital" sex - and got captured by the propaganda machine that others in this thread have described. I believe the biggest turning point was 9/11: it terrified him, even if he couldn't quite admit that to himself, and he lived the rest of his life in a state of inchoate fear - stoked, naturally, by Fox News and other right-wing media. So, that was the (white) American Baby Boomer Experience, writ small. He did materially well, but I think was a better and wiser person in his twenties than he became later on. Rejecting climate change ("anthropogenic climate change", my father would point out, which let him off any evidentiary hook) is only a small part of an entire ideological project, which demands to be swallowed whole.

by jfengel 7mo ago

wombat-man 7mo ago

Yes, it's hard for some to believe, but there are people in my family who are otherwise very intelligent but will not change their opinions on some things. Like climate change.

semiquaver 7mo ago
Unless you are a scientist directly engaging with the literature, you and your relative are both doing the same thing: trusting the opinion of peers and high-status people in your political clan about what is happening in the world. It just happens that people in your clan are telling the truth while the other one is lying. Neither side’s behavior can be considered “more intelligent” when you consider the vast majority of people on both sides are “opinion-takers” simply conforming to received social norms about what to believe about the world. The “opinion-makers” on both sides are undoubtedly intelligent, although you might prefer to call one side “cunning” instead.
- catapart 7mo ago
  you don't have to be a scientist to directly engage with the literature. from mathematical proofs to directly observed phenomena to statistical certainties - it's all out there for you to engage with and feel secure in your findings just by having an internet connection. there's a qualitative difference in that evidence from the "sides" and therefore there is a qualitative and practical difference in the "more intelligent" side. "truth" is not incidental to the situation, it's the entire point of making claims at all. So a side that is making claims that turn out to not be true - whether you personally verify that or not - is a worse side, intellectually, than another.
  - whamlastxmas 7mo ago
    If the side you follow says the science community is political and biased, then "just look at the literature" isn't going to help. It's like telling an atheist they'd believe in Jesus if they'd just read the bible. We are lied to constantly by people who influence our lives. You can't even go to the grocery store without being lied to - being told breakfast cereals are healthy, that low fat options will make you less fat, shrinkflation, misleading unit pricing. It's no wonder people are so distrusting Even if you're a democrat you still have to admit that democrats lie, a ton, and it's super obvious. Maybe if our leadership in general, on both sides, was capable of being decent humans then we'd be able to build trust and stop doing dumb shit as a civilization
    - anonymars 7mo ago
      Unfortunately at some level, as usual, it comes down to game theory If you tell the nuanced truth and lose, and your opponent tells simplified untruths and wins, where does that leave you? As I understand it (obviously a gross simplification), Jimmy Carter attempted to treat Americans like adults, but Americans did not want to inconvenience themselves by wearing sweaters
    - catapart 7mo ago
      please engage in good faith. if you think mathematical proofs will be an issue when I tell someone to "look at the literature", you either don't know what a mathematical proof is, or are too far abstracted from reality to influence any practical action. yes, we're being lied to. no, they don't fuck up the science in order to lie to you. they just expect you not to read the science. because, truthfully, it's rare that the people who are lying to you would even know how to fuck up the science in their favor. so they bet on your ignorance, based on their ignorance, and they usually win the bet. but not if you just go look it up and engage with it. it's not about reading a single paper; it's about always reading every paper (on topics you have decided you are going to have an opinion about) with a keen and unshakeable focus on practical effect. anything else is an academic boondoggle.
  - numitus 7mo ago
    That’s a pretty weak argument. What percentage of people actually have the qualifications to understand and verify a research paper? And how much can you even trust the raw data? At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of faith—whether you choose to believe the guy in the church or the guy at the university.
- hamasho 7mo ago
  I think choosing reliable authority requires a little intelligence. I don’t know how to build a robust house, but I can understand that should be on the solid base (scientific method) upon stable field, instead of mysterious objects from thousand years ago.
- whamlastxmas 7mo ago
  I really love the way you communicated this and wish HN posters could more routinely invite curious conversations like this. Which isn't to say I'm perfect at it either
belorn 7mo ago
Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. Those actions involve contested subjects like economical aspects (both national and global), fairness among population demographics, historical fairness (such as indigenous populations), border politics and wars, as well as what methods and technology is scientifically proven to be effective measures. Denialism in this aspect is very broad concept, and if we define it that anyone who disagree with the politician actions are idiots, and everyone who agree with them are intelligent, then a large portion of people will be idiots even if a large number of them are very intelligent in other areas.
- vkou 7mo ago
  > Climate change and climate change denial is not just about the scientific facts about what is happening to the climate, it is also the political opinion about what actions should be done. It would be great if what you said is true, and people were just arguing about what to do about it. It's not, though. "It's a hoax" is both the start, and the end point for a large portion of the population, the media, and the politicians that represent it.
  - belorn 7mo ago
    How would you know if its a large portion of the population if media and politicians label people deniers just because they have a difference in opinion about what actions should be done? In absolute terms, the portion of the worlds population that deny that the climate is changing is a single digit percentage, and that include the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_on_climate_chan...). The portion is a bit larger if you include people who think that the climate is changing but that is mostly caused by natural causes, but it is still a small minority compared to the wast majority that see climate change as either caused exclusively by human activity or as a mix between human activity and natural causes. The "It's all a hoax" is a popular talking point but their followers are fewer in real life. It much more commonly to find that people with opposing view who actually agreeing that climate change is real, but that they disagree on policy. As an example, creating environmental policy based on per capita create a complete different policy compared to absolute emissions. The later is no more climate change denial than the first, and yet the later generally get labeled as denial.
mmmmmbop 7mo ago
In Germany, for many years we had been told that climate change is the most important thing ever, that we need to change our habits or else the world will go down, that if we don't act now, we will all be doomed. Then the Ukraine war happened, and suddenly nobody was talking about climate change anymore. I'll admit, I'm a simple man and I don't know the science behind all of this. But as a citizen, it does feel confusing how one day you're being told that we're all going to die unless we change something, and then suddenly even though nothing changed, it seems to be fine after all.
- Timon3 7mo ago
  Plenty of people in Germany (on all social/political levels) still talk about climate change, and have done so without pause before, during and since Ukraine. If you think that everything "seems to be fine after all", you're in for a very rude awakening.
  - mmmmmbop 7mo ago
    Is that your perception, or do you have data to back this up? For context, here's one source saying public concern for climate change has fallen in Germany from 42% to 34% from 2022 to 2025, in line with other European countries. [0] This was a study done by a German sustainability non-profit. Here's another source stating that globally, news coverage about climate change has diminished by 38% from 2021 to 2025. [1] Here's a third source stating that the share of German citizens who claim to be "very concerned" about climate change has dropped from 50% to 33% from 2019 to 2025. [2] [0] https://fsc.org/en/newscentre/general-news/climate-change-falls-over-20-behind-top-global-concern-in-2025-new-ipsos https://fsc.org/en/newscentre/general-news/climate-change-fa... [1] https://mecco.colorado.edu/summaries/special_issue_2025.html https://mecco.colorado.edu/summaries/special_issue_2025.html [2] https://carbon-pulse.com/482517/#entry-482802 https://carbon-pulse.com/482517/#entry-482802
    - Timon3 7mo ago
      Seems like you've answered your own question.

jstanley 7mo ago

100 is not a perfect score on an IQ test! 100 is the mean score. It's not a percentage.

sebastianmestre 7mo ago
I don't think that's what the GP was going for... rather, implying that flat-eartherness is uncorrelated to IQ and, thus, the average IQ of flat-earthers is the same as that of the general population.
- jfengel 7mo ago
  Flerfers seem to be a somewhat different problem. In my experience, the vast majority of flat earthers are trolls, pretending to be stupid for the purpose of angering people. I'm sure there are some genuine flat earthers out there, and I imagine that their IQs do average near 100 (perhaps a little lower). But I'm basing that on a general understanding of how people come to stupid beliefs, rather than from observations of individuals, because I'm not sure I've ever met a flat earther who actually believed what he was saying.

everdrive 7mo ago

A lot of beliefs are cultural and not directly related to intelligence. From an outsider's perspective, it can be difficult to tell which beliefs are merely fact-based and which are rooted in culture. I think an important thought experiment here would be to really imagine people going to war, killing each other over whether or not biblical transubstantiation is literal or metaphorical. who had the "intelligent" belief in this case? I'd argue neither side and that this was pure tribalism.

everdrive 7mo ago

One other thing that's interesting -- at least in my personal observations, climate deniers don't usually actually argue the science. They might do this when publishing or speaking publicly. But, at least when you're talking with them and they're at ease and speaking freely, they seem to offer a different argument. The argument I've seen, which really sticks with me, is that climate change is false, yes, but that's sort of a given that we don't investigate. Climate change was cooked up so that "the other side" could impose all sorts of horrible restrictions on "us." I obviously don't agree with the argument, (ie, I think climate change is real and quite urgent) but I think it's an interesting framing. It's an argument from tribalism most obviously, but I also think it does what so many people do when attempting to understand complex events; it transforms the problem into more of a personal drama. The "real issue" is that "those people" are "against us." You see this sort of framing all the time; complex problems boiled down into personal dramas because people intuitively understand personal dramas and seek them out, but not necessarily because a personal drama has the best explanatory power.

eszed 7mo ago
This exactly is what drew in my late father, who was a scientist (not climate, obviously!) with raw intelligence several standard deviations above average. "They" were using climate change as a stalking horse for communism / woke-ism / whatever other "big government" thing he thought was counter to the interests of people like him. He wasn't always like that. Maybe he wouldn't have described himself as such at the time, but in his twenties and early thirties he was a Liberal. He was a Peace Corps volunteer, attended Civil Rights marches, advocated on behalf of gay people, argued for gender equality, strongly opposed the Vietnam War, and was appalled by Watergate. Fast-forward to the last decade of his life, in which my father donated to all three Trump presidential campaigns, displayed a Gadsden flag on his mantle, rejected his trans-gender grandchild, and made (at the very least) replacement-theory adjacent noises. Oh, and preferred Ivermectin over covid vaccination, of course. What I think happened was that he was culturally out of step with most people who otherwise shared his politics in the 1970s - he was religious, so viscerally disgusted by drug use and "extra-marital" sex - and got captured by the propaganda machine that others in this thread have described. I believe the biggest turning point was 9/11: it terrified him, even if he couldn't quite admit that to himself, and he lived the rest of his life in a state of inchoate fear - stoked, naturally, by Fox News and other right-wing media. So, that was the (white) American Baby Boomer Experience, writ small. He did materially well, but I think was a better and wiser person in his twenties than he became later on. Rejecting climate change ("anthropogenic climate change", my father would point out, which let him off any evidentiary hook) is only a small part of an entire ideological project, which demands to be swallowed whole.