Intelligence as privilege

Interrogate yourselves and your approach here, as a thought exercise etc

my enormous brain is a curse

abstract intelligence is cobblers

smarty wears the pants

we let idiots run shit so who is the real moran

Quiet week at work?

abstract intelligence is cobblers

― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 December 2020 13:51 (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In a pure state, sure

Otherwise that's just a clever evasion

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here, which might be me evading but might be you. I did think a bit about "intelligence" since you asked tho, and I feel like it's mostly used in sentences in that pure nonsense state, so how does thoughts about it merit much respect?

Now it might serve as a self-deluding shortcut for people when considering the way they interact with the broader social world around them, and if they don't interrogate those assumptions they might think that other people who relate differently to that broad social world are inferior by dint of birth or effort or education or something, but really if we're just gonna have koans as thread starters we're just gonna get koans as answers

dmac's just feeling guilty about reading all that le carre

I was just reading a brief history of eyeglasses and poor eyesight, and there are some theories that myopia has always been a thing but just didn't matter when you were working in the fields or shoveling holes, it only really came into play for scholars who were inside reading. And given that reading (and, for that matter, scholarship) was a pretty elite thing, eyeglasses became associated with intelligence.

(This was an interesting essay, regardless: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pop-psych/201706/why-do-so-many-humans-need-glasses_

Put differently: do dumb ppl exist?

I'm not like them
But I can pretend
The sun is gone
But I have a light
The day is done
But I'm having fun
I think I'm dumb
Maybe just happy

Put differently: do dumb ppl exist?

"i dont see intelligence

[Blocked. Tap to read.]

I clicked and I clicked and I clicked and nothing happened.

how is babby formed

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/c2/51/37c25183e37a4b7c4a92b5575d0802c2.jpg

Off to a good start here.

mute people exist & should prob be used as an insult less

whole intelligence vs stupidity thing reeks of eugenics

Fabulous execution tbh x

I don't think I've ever heard anyone use 'dumb' in the sense of 'mute' – that meaning has all but vanished ime.

Is it ok to call Donald Trump a moron?

'idiot' is from the Greek for 'one who does their own thing' so i'm proud to be an idiot tbph

Only if you really mean it.

I've no idea how or why user Left managed to shoe in 'mute' here, but eh

xp

xp did you know the swastika was actually way older and... etc

user pomenitul taking a 'taking a Trump' all over this thread imo

'idiot' is from the Greek for 'one who does their own thing' so i'm proud to be an idiot tbph

Indeed: idiots are idiomatic and idiosyncratic and they rule. #TeamIdiot

xps because 'mute' is synonymous with 'dumb'?

Seems to me that intelligence = privilege roughly to the extent that one's intelligence serves some sort of practical function. Although I suppose even if you squander The Smarts, you still have a leg up inasmuch as you possess a thing that could theoretically have been utilized toward some practical function.

never mind, I clearly can't read--I'm too dumb for this thread

haha idiot is the main intelligence-related pejorative i use, because i parse it as "private", a privilege indeed

Dostoevsky figured it out long ago.

there's diogenes and then there's just lumpen

Literally classist.

early 20th century (as a medical term denoting an adult with a mental age of about 8–12): from Greek mōron, neuter of mōros ‘foolish’.

the modern etymology of moron is problematic but the classical seems fine. i say yay to moron

On an unrelated note, what's up with Talk Talk's 'Dum Dum Girl'?

Difficult to imagine a weirder evasion the thread couldve taken than to start running through the most acceptable epithets for those who could be surmised as lacking the privilege we may or may not admit exists

a dum dum girl is surely a hollow-tipped girl that explodes on contact

always wondered if Dum Dum Girls was a reference to Dum Dum Boys by Iggy

Ahhh, that does seem likely.

Difficult to imagine a weirder evasion the thread couldve taken than to start running through the most acceptable epithets for those who could be surmised as lacking the privilege we may or may not admit exists

15 years ago, the thread would have been flooded with jigglepanda GIFs

It might be argued that intelligence (of the kind valued by society-at-large) is often an artifact of preexisting privilege.

Stop djp, I'll be crying if you don't stop

And maybe one measure of like legit intelligence is the extent to which it penetrates an absence of preexisting privilege.

It might be argued that intelligence (of the kind valued by society-at-large) is often an artifact of preexisting privilege.

Tbf you can also be deemed 'too smart for your own good'. There comes a point where 'intelligence' turns into a liability so while it ranks fairly high in the pecking order, it falls short of the very top, where pure pragmatic power reigns supreme.

Wtf is 'intelligence' tho is the question we should be asking ourselves first and foremost. Surely we're not thinking of IQ tests and other such tools of oppression?

it's only oppression if you're bad at them

Hmmm.

Think we'd all agree OL that "intelligence", if you choose to define it at all, is always going to be so refracted through a contextual prism before it could even be imperfectly measured at all so while yeah the proof of any one pudding is in the eating if you will then nevertheless no one chef is measured by one pudding, before you even get to their personal journey to whatever kitchen they had to cook in or whatever ingredients were made available to them and all that

So, reject "legit" intelligence i think as the topic, theres no illegit intelligence if you want imo to engage with it as an attribute that may or may not be viewed as a privilege

Wtf is 'intelligence' tho is the question we should be asking ourselves first and foremost. Surely we're not thinking of IQ tests and other such tools of oppression?

― pomenitul, Thursday, 3 December 2020 15:24 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I dont mean to be waspish but of fuckin course not pls folks

Not much point in a thread where any one concept of "intelligence" doesnt come from the contributor in context, is there

Projection on the starter's definition so as not to bother, otoh, well nobody surprised me lets say

I'm not even sure how to gauge intelligence really except in its obvious absence. And it seems ime that most 'stupid' people are more just varying degrees of lazy/careless/selfish.

Each could be argued as in themselves responses to an inability or difficulty to easily grasp task/concept x, maybe OL?

deems evading evasion.

when I call someone stupid, I should clarify that I'm not meaning to hurt their feelings.

i'm stating my intent to kill them and their whole families

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkBQjhqmT0k

I, too, like to be stupefied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTibdlmbNyI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSZI6sYgXCA

Okay maybe intelligence = privilege to the extent that one's ability to productively utilize their thinking power isn't compromised by, say, environmental factors. If you have to deal day-to-day with a lot of the bullshit that's concomitant with a lack of privilege, your brain (however highly-functioning) is likely to be overtaxed to the extent that your intelligence gets overshadowed somewhat.

Look, I don't know if any of this is making sense, I'm just spitballing while I try to work, and also I am a non-intelligent so cut me some slack.

^star-bellied Sneetch

I'm just spitballing while I try to work, and also I am a non-intelligent so cut me some slack

cosign, and New Board Description plz.

I like calling people "big dummies" and letting them figure out whether it's an insult or a term of endearment.

intelligence comes from paying attention imo. people pay different amounts of attention to different things and are at very different levels of leisure to pay that attention. i have yet to encounter the person this theory does not explain well enough to work with.

cosign, and New Board Description plz.

― pomenitul, Thursday, December 3, 2020 10:38 AM bookmarkflaglink

If you have to deal day-to-day with a lot of the bullshit that's concomitant with a lack of privilege, your brain (however highly-functioning) is likely to be overtaxed to the extent that your intelligence gets overshadowed somewhat.

"Avoid fuck-ups. Fools, I call them. You all know the type — no matter how good it sounds, everything they have anything to do with turns into a disaster. Trouble for themselves and everyone connected with them. A fool is bad news, and it rubs off — don't let it rub off on you." — William S. Burroughs

Do you think, dlh, that some ppl can find it harder to pay attn to others at different things?

I mean i like the thought but its not imo a complete one

that some ppl can find it harder to pay attn to others at different things

i mean no doubt; what do i know about brains.

when arguing about it i tend to take an aggressive tabula-rasa position, but then i'm usually arguing with privileged people in danger of thinking they were born smart. well one person in particular.

look I'm right here

everything they have anything to do with turns into a disaster - William S. Burroughs

I mean this guy literally shot his wife dead by "accident" so we should definitely listen to his opinions on fools and disasters right

a rare fellow, my lord-- he's as good at anything! and yet a fool.

xxxp to dlh

Fair explanation so, but im hoping for a thread where the mostly-smart ppl of ilx consider the privilege we most of us all have had unthinking since birth over many others and maybe pick through why we dont view it as such, or we deny it exists, or we deny it can be measured or treated as a privilege like any other, or we maybe are shy/a lil aggressive about this lens of viewing it or how we feel, if we grant that it does exist and can be (if not measured) viewed as a privilege, about how we or "society" or one speaks of or thinks of those without it and how that compares to how we speak if or think of those without other privileges which we may or may not be much happier and quicker to speak of in such terms

xxxxp Okay I'll take the bait I guess.

Initially I want to say that the expression of intelligence, whatever form is takes, tends to be in an inverse relationship with trauma. But then, survival under extreme circumstances requires, and cultivates, certain kinds of intelligence too. But there will still be trauma to be reckoned with eventually. And those trauma-related kinds of intelligence may or may not be useful at other times.

In conclusion ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's an interesting pov, tho short for a starter!

I mean I sort of glimpse but don't really know what exactly triggered this thread prompt so I'm sort of peering through the veils at various straw-positions only half perceived. Work with me here.

Whatever intelligence I possess has been a form of privilege that has allowed me to dig myself out of more holes than I can count (the kinds of holes a lot of people aren't ever able to properly escape), but the fact that I've wound up in so many holes (many of my own digging) is probably one of the better arguments against my possession of intelligence.

I resemble that emotion

IO- Happy to, i think it's something we dont look at is all, or i think we can look at in in the way expressed in the title and see what we see.

Are you saying, in sone way connected to dlh "attention" point, that some elements of intelligence (or his ability to attend) come from an absence of learned aversion (sorry, wordy way around that)

Hard to be a God, innit.

dmac i can't tell if you want ilx to acknowledge its material or its biological privilege? figuring out which one's the real culprit around here seems like a clean-cut case for occam.

Fair explanation so, but im hoping for a thread where the mostly-smart ppl of ilx consider the privilege we most of us all have had unthinking since birth over many others and maybe pick through why we dont view it as such, or we deny it exists, or we deny it can be measured or treated as a privilege like any other, or we maybe are shy/a lil aggressive about this lens of viewing it or how we feel, if we grant that it does exist and can be (if not measured) viewed as a privilege, about how we or "society" or one speaks of or thinks of those without it and how that compares to how we speak if or think of those without other privileges which we may or may not be much happier and quicker to speak of in such terms

I do not believe intelligence is a form of privilege. I base this on the sheer number of dumbass motherfuckers in power (not just political power — bosses, cops, teachers and school administrators, etc., etc.) virtually everywhere you look. Indeed, I believe intelligence can be a social handicap and can in fact hinder one's progress through life — "You think you're smart, don't you? You're fuckin' fired"; "You think you're better than me?" *punched in bar*; etc., etc.

I mean this guy literally shot his wife dead by "accident" so we should definitely listen to his opinions on fools and disasters right

Burroughs was a giant fuckup whose talents and wisdom were massively overestimated by his devotees, but who nevertheless had a few perceptive observations in him. They were thin on the ground after about 1959, though.

I think most people are already paying as much attention as they can to all the things that seem important and feel the most good or the least bad, somewhere on a spectrum of how much pain it will cause if they're inattentive to those things?

dmac i can't tell if you want ilx to acknowledge its material or its biological privilege? figuring out which one's the real culprit around here seems like a clean-cut case for occam.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 3 December 2020 16:18 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think nailing it one way or the other is an attempt to shortcut to an answer to the question im not asking really.

You have it, in whatever contexts. Is it a privilege?

yeah otm in orbit-- a kind of material condition imo but not covered under my "leisure"

dmac-- well sure

Xp think i agree, io, but i maybe think that some ppl have abilities to get comfort and find avenues to prosper in contexts that require attention/"intelligence" where others are as you i think are saying just further alienated/frustrated by these contexts, where at least some measure of what can be seen as intelligence is measured or maybe seen to be an input into the success in whatever activity

I met some of the smartest people I've ever encountered at one of the best universities in the world; some of them came from deeply fucked-up backgrounds and many if not all of the people who fit that profile have gone on to excel in their chosen fields, whether those are software, social work, education, education policy, what have you. I've also met some extremely smart, talented people growing up in a lily-white exurb who were so focused on escaping the immediacy of their lives that all of their mental energy was consumed by the twin pillars of immediate survival and distraction from the things they were surviving. I understand how both ended up where they were because I talked to them and the common factor I see in terms of how society defines "success" and who is outwardly flagged as intelligent ties almost directly into what people used to distract themselves from the difficulties of their situation; the kids who dove into books/math/science/history/music/theater were much more likely to come out the other side as social-climbing (in terms of personal circumstance, not mindset) individuals recognized by their peers as intelligent, whereas the kids who dove into sex/drugs/drinking/fighting were not.

So, intelligence as a discrete, definable thing seems to be somewhat imaginary to me unless you define it as a measurement of how quickly someone can analyze and navigate the context in which they exist.

I also think a lot of positions we define as "successful" and associate with intelligence have nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with having enough money at your disposal to pick yourself up after you faceplant and try again.

You lost me a bit in the last clause but I think a) defining "intelligence" is a fool's errand, because b) there are too many kinds of it and c) as several ppl have already said it's too often conflated with "success" (another head-scratcher tbh).

Anyway you don't have to be "intelligent" to be kind or compassionate, qualities that I think go a lot further in lessening human suffering, not to be too hand-wavey about it.

I guess, shuffling toward your actual point, I probably hold ppl more or less accountable for showing signs of intelligence or attention or some level of rational processing power, based on how far I perceive them to be from a hard edge of some kind. A petit bougeouis who fears being slightly less well off is more accountable (imo) for showing some use of rational thought than someone who doesn't have enough to eat or lives in some kind of jeopardy. I guess what kind of "fear" and "jeopardy" you find credible in others is maybe what is actually being gestured at here?

I also think a lot of positions we define as "successful" and associate with intelligence have nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with having enough money at your disposal to pick yourself up after you faceplant and try again.

otm 100x

I also think a lot of positions we define as "successful" and associate with intelligence have nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with having enough money at your disposal to pick yourself up after you faceplant and try again.

Very much so, yes (see also: 'if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?').

unless you define it as a measurement of how quickly someone can analyze and navigate the context in which they exist.

― DJP, Thursday, 3 December 2020 16:32 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Its maybe the encapsulation of "real world" intelligence for the purposes, right?

Tho wrapped, even under such a huge qualifier, in with a lot else

I don't think that necessarily calls for a dismissal of the concept of intelligence (not that i think that's at all what youve said) but it's a big proviso alright into whether you get to leverage the potential privilege of whatever types/extent of intelligence you do have

I also think a lot of positions we define as "successful" and associate with intelligence have nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with having enough money at your disposal to pick yourself up after you faceplant and try again.

― DJP, Thursday, 3 December 2020 16:33 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

And energy! Which money is an input into, but also a host of other related and unrelated things ime

We don’t need to understand the essence of intelligence to agree that it exists. But I know so many intelligent fuckups and successful idiots that I’m not sure it’s always an advantage.

The real unacknowledged privilege is beauty.

Hmmm… If memory serves, we had a thread about that. It went about as well as you'd expect.

xp a topic for another site imo

to a degree, intelligence requires some level of confidence (though so does idiocy). large part of the reason I never fully reached my potential is because I lack so much confidence that I doubt any conclusion I draw or statement I make unless it's something more binary, with a correct answer.

I'm not even sure if I'm Neanderthal tbh

being simple is the privilege discuss

tis the gift to be simple
tis the gift to be free

I mean, if you don't have a place to sleep at night in the winter, anything you have to do to make that happen is probably an excellent use of your executive function, processing power, whatever we're calling it.

Sorry, I'm trying to coordinate resources for some ppl and I also just listened to two podcasts in a row about homelessness in Oakland, CA so I'm kind of a one-trick pony right now.

as several ppl have already said it's too often conflated with "success"

Is it though?

I think ppl are running to the effects as a measure but in the absence of any reliable pre-effect measure its understandable

(School? Conversation? Ability to get witticism? Reading comprehension? Theres prob a million ways to "uselessly" measure it but ofc each has access/motivation entry blockers even while being limited besides)

to a degree, intelligence requires some level of confidence (though so does idiocy). large part of the reason I never fully reached my potential is because I lack so much confidence that I doubt any conclusion I draw or statement I make unless it's something more binary, with a correct answer.

I don't think intelligence is related to privilege, but mental health can be? Some of the smartest people I know are some of the most dysfunctional, whereas being relatively stable and organized will get you a lot farther.

This is why you need to specify that you're a very stable genius.

xp to Tom: Again, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There's no visibility for someone whose intelligence is devoted to survival and just keeps them above water, so to speak. Apart from ppl we know personally, the only way we can really see other individuals is when they're singled out & validated by some kind of...system of values? And we ready about them or see them in media or whatever.

I don't think intelligence is related to privilege, but mental health can be? Some of the smartest people I know are some of the most dysfunctional, whereas being relatively stable and organized will get you a lot farther.

― change display name (Jordan), Thursday, 3 December 2020 16:53 (forty-one seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Related to" tho, as opposed to a privilege in itself.

MH is definitely related to whether or not you effectively leverage it, along with all the other intersectionals etc

Welp looks like we've solved this one, nice work everybody! Let's break for lunch. Who wants extra fries??

I think we're moving along but its a big, non linear topic that we wont solve completely until maybe monday or tuesday tbh but yes lunch would be good

Not gonna make any friends by saying this, but intelligence is westernized ableist class bullshit. The idea of g factor IQ, which is roughly a calculation of reasoning, spatial ability, memory, processing speed, and vocabulary, is at best a specious and arbitrary metric — and most people who use intelligence as a measure aren’t even discussing it in those (shitty) psychometric terms, but as validation of social worth.

And yes I typed that at the beginning of the thread but only submitted it now, because I am not smört any more. Probably one of the people who types a lot made that point more cogently, and in a less inflammatory way.

There's no visibility for someone whose intelligence is devoted to survival and just keeps them above water, so to speak. Apart from ppl we know personally, the only way we can really see other individuals is when they're singled out & validated by some kind of...system of values? And we ready about them or see them in media or whatever.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Thursday, 3 December 2020 16:54 (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Its one of my prompts, my experience for ppl close to me or that i know who dont have a toolbox either containing whatever may combine to make or comprise of intelligence alongside whichever other elements then allow you to put that intelligence to work for you towards whatever goals.

What effect that has (insofar as it can be isolated from *everything else* asbyou rightly will point out) in what goals you actually set for yourself is another important piece- real privilege doesnt contemplate many pitfalls that are very real to various other people

Still think, aside from the question of "is it enhanced by other privileges?" (Yes, clearly, isn't that what we always mean by privilege? And intersectionality?) its an interesting question as to whether "intelligence" the wider thing is a form of privilege.

I dont think anyone has convincingly, in pointing out that it neither exists in a pure and uncomplex form isolated from any other characteristic nor is easily measured or scoped, established that it doesnt exist and is not subject to the same inspection that other privilege invites.

...

(sadly takes off IQ test results t-shirt)

xxp is all true

xp define intelligence as IQ or mensa membership if you like soda

Might be better to define it as you believe in it, unless you believe it doesnt exist at all

Take assurance that it hasnt been defined anywhere as "lol plumbers are fucken stupid" save for ilxors who seems to need to pick that fight in order to have that fight

We all use ilx for different things

Dumb people can be clever too, you would know if you paid any attention to me

Not gonna make any friends by saying this, but intelligence is westernized ableist class bullshit. The idea of g factor IQ, which is roughly a calculation of reasoning, spatial ability, memory, processing speed, and vocabulary, is at best a specious and arbitrary metric — and most people who use intelligence as a measure aren’t even discussing it in those (shitty) psychometric terms, but as validation of social worth.

I largely agree with this, which is why I used my ability to excel at IQ and standardized test to shame and belittle the racists I went to K-12 with

Yeah but djp you were 25 in all fairness

IQ is Westernized ableist class bullshit, no doubt about it. Intelligence tho? *citation needed*

IQ is Westernized ableist class bullshit, no doubt about it. Intelligence tho? *citation needed*

― pomenitul, Thursday, 3 December 2020 18:08 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Do you feel constrained in how you get to define the term/concept for the purposes of the question? Or are you deciding to be for whatever reason?

Strange of you but feel free to not use IQ or whatever other formal measure or feel free to say you dont believe intelligence exists, eithwr would be a good input imo

also I have to lol a little bit at "not gonna make any friends with this but *repeats through-line thesis statement of the thread*" even with the "I didn't post this when it would have been relevant" caveat

Not trolling, and not aiming for a hot take, but I sincerely don’t know if I believe in intelligence as a discrete phenomenon. I do, however, believe in people who have highly developed skills or specific and beneficial habits of thought, are versed in the application of precise logics, are incredibly well-matched to take intuitive leaps at certain fields, possess outsized knowledge or wisdom or erudition, have creative or musical or kinisthetic (so?) faculties far beyond average, and neurological idiosyncrasies that put them far beyond us normies at task X, Y, or Z.


The traits that gets called “intelligence” is, I think, really about social suitability. In other words, I see intelligence is actually about a person’s match of skills and environment. Folks in an academic environment who advance theories and research and promote life-of-mind stuff are determined intelligent in that context; musicians who develop new sounds and art forms are intelligent in their field; a CPA who knows the tax code backwards and forwards...

In part because many of us form our theory of intelligence during our own K-12 experience, we tend to stick close to that sense of the word — which is synonymous with precision, erudition, compliance, and memory — instead of taking a more holistic view.

What's K-12?

School from kindergarten through 12th grade

…in the US.

I gathered that.

Lets say that for purposes we all, while acknowledging even it is not anywhere near comprehensive, subscribe to your much broader definition than whatever K-12 is, which im sure we will all agree on

I don't think tbh that id personally go so far as "intelligence doesnt exist" but I think we've already touched throughout thread on how impossible any hard line statement is going to be to impose

NB and many xps i still cannot work out (lol contextual intelligence) if my reading lecarre is evidence for or against intelligence

…in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Canada#Primary_and_secondary_education

Primary education, Intermediate education, and secondary education combined are sometimes referred to as K-12 (Kindergarten through Grade 12). Secondary schooling, known as high school, collegiate institute, école secondaire or secondary school, consists of different grades depending on the province in which one resides. Furthermore, grade structure may vary within a province or even within a school division; as to whether or not they operate middle or junior high schools.

NB and many xps i still cannot work out (lol contextual intelligence) if my reading lecarre is evidence for or against intelligence

what about missing one of the other Le Carre related meanings of "intelligence"?

Intelligence exists, varies from context to context and is impossible to define. IQ is dum dum.

2xp I've never heard anyone use K-12 in a Canadian context but I'm in Quebec (which is more like K-11 anyway), so…

what about missing one of the other Le Carre related meanings of "intelligence"?

― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 3 December 2020 18:27 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah ffs

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2019/08/31/TELEMMGLPICT000000572289_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqx1N6mzreoM9UEkoOCiuTNsGvqyI1uw49faN4tBvuwBA.jpeg?imwidth=450

Intelligence exists, varies from context to context and is impossible to define. IQ is dum dum.

To what degree do any problems with measurement, contextualisation, definition prevent one from saying "it exists and is a privilege in context"?

xp pls i cant after missing the obvious

Xp to Darragh - I agree with that. In fairness, I’m typing on a phone while multitasking and missing any subtly of the discussion. I’m sorry. And also in fairness, I work in special education with a population that is routinely and inaccurately determined to be unintelligent, except when intelligence is condescendingly applied in precise and unimportant circumstances.

To what degree do any problems with measurement, contextualisation, definition prevent one from saying "it exists and is a privilege in context"?

Does it prevent one from saying that? Perhaps someone who espouses that position can answer.

Xp to Darragh - I agree with that. In fairness, I’m typing on a phone while multitasking and missing any subtly of the discussion. I’m sorry. And also in fairness, I work in special education with a population that is routinely and inaccurately determined to be unintelligent, except when intelligence is condescendingly applied in precise and unimportant circumstances.

― mildew and sanctimony (soda), Thursday, 3 December 2020 18:41 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

No not at all, i may be coming across as sharp because tbh i think a reading of the thread might somewhat demonstrate a few swipes at the idea ilx could have a thread about it and a fella loses his normally pleasant outlook if persistently nudged, but im glad to see so many actually engage one way or the other- including a few who dont post enough but def have really interesting perspectives on exactly something like this, yourself included!

this is approaching a long-held theory of mine that there might be aspects of personal character that are so extreme and create issues such that they might be close to a legal definition of "disabling"

I think NV that across any number of spectra (word?) of personal characteristics the extremes def do start to get into territory of that sort, and that intellect, personality, everything that goes on inside a skull, mesh to make any one aspect immeasurable but not unrecognisable depending on the (this word again) context

sense of humour imo, insofar as it can be recognised as an ability to make a connection, recognise intent behind, fit in the missing piece that is usually the art- in terms of people i would shorthand think of as 'smart' without ever knowing their exam results or work performance, is one of the purer measures

Is that in any way something that chimes, idk?

dangerous ground but i kind of agree

caveat: there are probably very serious and humourless people who are undoubted experts of fields or compassionate, thoughtful sorts in some regard

or perhaps those people find comedy in the falling of leaves in the autumn

Yeah i think we're going to all agree that the idea of one comprehensive 'I' unit of intelligence approach is dehumanising and insulting bulllshit tbf

perhaps sense of humour is one of the purer ways of establishing mutual intelligence

Hmmm.

Counterpoint: (farts)

mutual intelligence a much more 'measurable', concrete and arguably interesting quantity than individual intelligence imo

Its maybe just my preference tho

'interest' is, as discussed above as 'ability to pay attn', maybe distilled as 'concentration', a very applied manner or platform from which to demonstrate a rawer ability that exists, but jordan (again imo rightly) notes the intersection of MH as huge here that disrupts any such platform

and a million other external circs besides that can also impede the same thing ofc

Hello, all. I guess I'll have to start at the beginning and read this thread through to see if it's been sorted, yet.

obviously to participate in a mutual or collective intelligence you need skill at communicating and understanding

Both intelligences?

Is that a useful approach, intelligence(s)?

But would they be PRIVILEGES

skill at communicating and understanding is in many ways a relative privilege yes, albeit one that a lot of people have, which arguably dilutes the royal-jelly power of the privilege

if one understands too much, then one is prone to either enlightenment or despair

Both privileged experiences iirc.

'the privilege of despair' feels like a much-discussed longform article that might go viral

Obama sequel

Wood read, maybe even post a comment about it xp

Would, autocorrect not that intelligent

My uncle, retired math teacher who now volunteers as a tutor in Marin County: "Andy, if it wasn't for the gifted and the specials needs students, there'd be nobody left."

xpost lol, can't believe you misspelled 'wood'

'wuold'

'wloud'

'dwoul'

Many fine things said about intelligence itt. I especially appreciated DJP's contribution, ending:

intelligence as a discrete, definable thing seems to be somewhat imaginary to me unless you define it as a measurement of how quickly someone can analyze and navigate the context in which they exist.

But it seems to me that the element of privilege has been short-shrifted somewhat. Broadly speaking, everything in existence is subject to the conditions of its environment, but privileges are a specialized case, in that they do not exist outside of social relationships. So if we are to consider intelligence as privilege, the only elements of whatever we consider intelligence that could be considered as privilege would be those which originate within social relationships.

It seems to me this is where deems' formulation of the thread question takes on its murky and mysterious aspect, because as best I can sort it out, society (such as I experience it) is very much confused about when, where and how to grant privileges to 'intelligence', except insofar as it admires, elevates and rewards certain talents and abilities it finds functionally valuable, most of which are considered to be components of intelligence, but not the whole of intelligence.

Given all this confusion, I doubt we'll be able to get this one sorted to our full satisfaction.

https://genius.com/Friedrich-nietzsche-why-i-am-so-clever-annotated

Intelligence is seeing the way different bits of information are connected to each other and then drawing understanding. It’s just an ability, and any ability is generally also a privilege, but whether having a privilege is desirable in a situation is not a given. Someone may not want the ability to reach the top shelf in a room populated only by short people who can’t. Perhaps some of those people just appreciate the extended reach, but some might take advantage, and some resent or exclude, maybe some people will say the tallness doesn’t actually exist by any arbitrary measure! Having an unusual privilege is often accompanied by unhappiness.

lol I meant objective, not arbitrary.

But it seems to me that the element of privilege has been short-shrifted somewhat. Broadly speaking, everything in existence is subject to the conditions of its environment, but privileges are a specialized case, in that they do not exist outside of social relationships. So if we are to consider intelligence as privilege, the only elements of whatever we consider intelligence that could be considered as privilege would be those which originate within social relationships.

It seems to me this is where deems' formulation of the thread question takes on its murky and mysterious aspect, because as best I can sort it out, society (such as I experience it) is very much confused about when, where and how to grant privileges to 'intelligence', except insofar as it admires, elevates and rewards certain talents and abilities it finds functionally valuable, most of which are considered to be components of intelligence, but not the whole of intelligence.

This reminds me a bit of a book I'm slowly reading by Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, where he essentially argues that the sovereign "I" is a myth in that each individual exists only in relation to a plurality of others, in the "encounter" so to speak. One could say that intelligence might partly be the individual's ability to understand and synthesize these encounters with others into their own being. There might also be something to be said for collectivity in this regard.

Perhaps intelligence could be reconsidered as a "field effect"?

Two very interesting takes

Im not sure ive seen aimless' definition of privilege as something granted by society before

there definitely is no "i"

There is: the first person personal pronoun.

personal personal personal

to paraphrase toni braxton there is no i without you

or, to quote my favorite mewithoutyou lyric:

A deer between the tower and the tracks
Saw right through us
Said, "You don't know where you came from
You don't know where you're going
You think you're you-
You don't know who you are
You're not you
You're everyone else."

Je est un autre, etc.

I contain multitudes, etc.

I keep reading your DN as "mellon collie and the infinite Bradson" for some reason and it's been making me giggle all evening.

otm

that was to the lyrics

I have that Rimbaud quote tattooed on my chest. Also have Rimbaud's face tattooed on my arm.

(Young, foolish, and obsessed with Rimbaud is a type).

rosalind of many parts / of many faces eyes and hearts

Right lads we'll all had our poetry fun now but listen

Intelligence, right, as privilege, dye see, right?

Do yr research:

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-consider-intelligence-to-be-a-privilege-similar-to-how-race-or-gender-can-be-a-privilege

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/282r7k/cmv_intelligence_is_the_privilege_that_trumps_all/

Any thoughts yrself pom

If ofc "thoughts" or indeed "yrself" can be said to exist

Now you're catching on.

Existence, you see, is co-existence. Being, you see, is being-with. Heidegger sowed the seeds of his own de(con)struction when he coined the term 'Mitsein'.

You sound very intelligent

I’m not sure privilege really is a comprehensive enough word for how society treats exceptionalism in general. It implies the other people interacting with the subject are granting an advantage when recognizing it, but unfortunately seems that human nature often instead manifests that recognition in the form of punishment. Sometimes it’s discussed as “crab mentality” and “tall poppy syndrome”, but isn’t it kinda shitty that we as humans are so prone to doing this? Like it’s some primitive group cohesion instinct that does it’s best to keep our actual potential in check. I doubt the AIs will have the same issue.

Anyway, the real answer is: intelligence stems from the Latin intellego (I understand).

Intellego consists of inter (between/among) + lego )read/gather/choose).

Intelligence is reading/gathering/choosing between/among.

Not everyone can do that therefore it is a privilege.

Everyone can do that therefore it is not a privilege.

Not everyone can do that therefore it is a curse.

Choose/read/gather one.

There you have it.

*(read/gather/choose)

Fun fact: înțelegere in Romanian (same root, obv.) simply means 'understanding'. 'Înțeleg' means 'I understand', no more and no less.

Is understanding a privilege y/n?

oh is that why romania is called romania

Ita.

I heard it's because it's full of Rûm.

that is a pretty staggering thing that I didn't work out until I was really old (now)

it's fine though because intelligence is a privilege and this way i get to flex my lack of privilege

Great thread. My skim-read conclusion, if indeed intelligence can be categorised, is that it's not in and of itself a privilege but part of a greater range of factors associated with privilege.

This is a crossover with the bullshit job thread, but being involved in teaching secondary means I'm in a system that perpetuates the myth of the right kind of intelligence and daily, hourly, punishes and humiliates those that don't, can't, won't display it.

is street smarts etc recognised as intelligence on whatever scale you're using.
& learning how to do whatever you're doing in the most efficient way.
Or are you talking about culturally valorised things like IQ and passing exams that are set up in certain ways to benefit certain elements of society.

JUst wondering how objective a view of intelligence one is looking at since it does have several different means of manifestation dunnit?

not (entirely) intended as more snark. and oh i don't think i've got the energy to get deep into it right now - a quibble not unfamiliar to some of the rest of youse tbf. i might scattergun my way thru the day as whim and liquor dictates. anyway, the electoral process, in western democracies, a lot is made sometimes of the importance of ideas and debate, the sacral nature of the vote and how it ought to come from a place of mature judgement maybe, a lot of jibes about intelligence creep into these discussions etc. seriously tho is there a purer picture of the general electoral mind than this and isn't that fine and hasn't it always been the case? and what kind of privilege would some notion of intelligence confer in this situation. ach, tired of meself already.

Labour is leading the polls in 'Red Wall' constituencies - reversing the position from last year’s election - according to exclusive polling for Channel 4 News.

Many cited confusing messaging over Covid from the Tory government - and Dominic Cummings's trip to Barnard Castle. pic.twitter.com/qUCmGFSw8W

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) December 3, 2020

not (entirely) intended as more snark. and oh i don't think i've got the energy to get deep into it right now - a quibble not unfamiliar to some of the rest of youse tbf. i might scattergun my way thru the day as whim and liquor dictates

imo an excellent approach tbh

im not sure we're going inter alia to get much clearer (after a full day of not really thinking too hard or seriously about it but again thats conversation rather than research for you and thats fine by me) about whether too many of us are going to allow at all that intelligence exists without a prohibitive (taking the word neutrally if u pls) amount of qualifiers that seem to me to be preloaded to stress only that the effects of many other privileges have a multiplier or a spoiling effect, which is true & consider it baked into the premise

we also agree that no one measure of intelligence in no one context currently suffices to sufficiently grade or classify for chart purposes, but again can we agree that and still park it to allow that there are nevertheless mental capacities of - i don't want to say cognitive, but somewhere between that narrow field and somewhere short of what could more effectively be classed as personality, say- abilities that you are either yep flat-out born with or are somehow (nutritionally, environmentally, wtf ever) engrained so early so as not to make any difference in the distinction?

Allowing further io's point that even a real world "you know it when you see it" perception of another person's intelligence isnt ever satisfactory based on what (forgive if im forgetting anyone) djp, jordan, soda and tbfttl meself have pointed out that trauma, disadvantages of all types ranging from idk bad upbringing thru mh issues thru addiction thru the effects whatever imperfections your own society has had on your expectations of yourself because of yr race, gender, sexuality, social status, looks, the lot-

Allowing that intelligences (i like the plural) should for the purposes cover all the non k12 shit like conversational acuity, artistic/sonic conceptualisation, id argue myself that theres a non-measurable practicality/innate or ingrained 'amateur engineering' talent....

(....is the concept we're seeking simply 'talent' ffs or is that too broad? can that be said to be too broad if "intelligence", that loaded-to-ninsense term is in play? its only a thread, we'll carry on)

, would i include capacity for compassion hmm idk not with adults anyway, beyond those socialised above per humour/conversation else we are again into personality, itself a loaded term that mainly covers good hair/teeth as a starter as well as having had a wonderful mother and never annoying anyone important and lads- fuck that, but id be argued that kids, animals idk maybe something going on there yeah. Look, loads- loads of intelligences.

All of the above provisos, which i think is plenty, and the thread itself as gotten thus far, which i think tbh is also a bonafide of sorts:

Youd rather "be" "intelligent" than not, and i think -notwithstanding how sharply dismissive most of us can be of opinions we disagree with these days in particular- most of us "are" "intelligent" in some or many of the proviso'd forms above (and id imagine many of the less-satisfactory definitions we have taken pains to dismiss thus far).

Had only a skim at some of what's here. I'd say intelligence doesn't matter, that whether you possess or not have whatever the definition of intelligence that this isn't used to deny people their basic necessities such as food, a roof, and also their ability to do things they want and develop whatever path they choose to take in life.

It's neither here nor there.

Nothing matters lol 👍

Yes it appears society as constructed today denies many people their right to express their intelligence.

xyzzz_ otm

thesis: intelligence is much more widely distributed among the species than inherited privilege is, and whom we publicly validate as "intelligent" are the smartest among those who've inherited privilege, along with those of lower social classes who most behave like the smartest among those who've inherited privilege, particularly in a way that results in upward class mobility (and the overall financial health of the privileged)

antithesis: maybe, kind of, but that's also kind of circular (what is "smart"?), and further, there are tons of smart outsiders and poor people, including artists, wunderkind software designers, and so forth, obscure and successful alike, we meet or are familiar with, who are radically critical, even contemptuous of privilege, which stance is itself often taken as a sign of intelligence

synthesis: profit!

possibly ye have threads to post in about the things ye want this thread to be about

Ye might even fuckin read what came before in those threads, ye might not, idk

deems honestly just go gloves off, this is agonising, just say whatever you deeply need to without the plausible deniability

like it’s so annoying that you’re just like dropping shly little digs in here and there, then when people respond you’re like “well EXCUSE ME my good thread with no ulterior motives deserves better replies than that”

Seriously just spit it out already

Ye might even fuckin read what came before in those threads, ye might not, idk

― spruce springclean (darraghmac), Friday, 4 December 2020 bookmarkflaglink

From 50 or so posts I did read it seemed like the point I wanted to make wasn't, however if I have time later I will read the rest of it 👍

Fair enough 👍

Thinking about this politically, a lot of right-wing populism feeds and is fueled by resentment of “elites” whose greatest alleged offense is “thinking they’re better than you,” know more than you, are smarter than you. So I’d say there’s definitely a perceived privilege there, which a not insignificant number of people feel excluded/disadvantaged by.

Those “elites” of course may not feel privileged because they may be dirt-poor and carrying loads of student debt and sharing a cheap apartment with junkies. But they’ve still got a bookshelf with Adorno and Rilke and whatever on it, and that in itself is enough to qualify them as hierarchically suspect.

If intelligence however we define it didn’t carry some implicit privilege, it wouldn’t be the target of so much resentment.

Meantime I was reading this yesterday which circles around my initial point. His talent for poetry was forged and ultimately killed by his circumstances. Who else is this world denying?

The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker: Xu Lizhi (1990-2014) https://t.co/F9q5Rdi933 via @libcomorg

— Wen-Yu Wu (@wenyuwyw) December 2, 2020

Thinking about this politically, a lot of right-wing populism feeds and is fueled by resentment of “elites” whose greatest alleged offense is “thinking they’re better than you,” know more than you, are smarter than you. So I’d say there’s definitely a perceived privilege there, which a not insignificant number of people feel excluded/disadvantaged by.

Those “elites” of course may not feel privileged because they may be dirt-poor and carrying loads of student debt and sharing a cheap apartment with junkies. But they’ve still got a bookshelf with Adorno and Rilke and whatever on it, and that in itself is enough to qualify them as hierarchically suspect.

If intelligence however we define it didn’t carry some implicit privilege, it wouldn’t be the target of so much resentment.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra),

Its a bigger thing, i think, how this stuff feeds into the political sphere (nv touched on it earlier, meant to touch on it) but i think it must needs be acknowledged, whether it has to be viewed as an effect of what chinaski/soda touched on also in what education does to those unable to demonstrate that narrow band of context-valued intelligence sufficiently

i was thinking about my sister and me when chewing this over - she very much raised to think of herself as "not bright" and probably a thing she doesn't much aspire to, me very much raised to think of myself as "bright" and a thing i've increasingly come to - i was gonna say not value much but it's different to that - let's say see it as more often than not a social marker which deludes those who insist upon it the most and is not a thing to be proud of, if we should indulge the sin of pride about anything.

i dunno my sister's great, i love her, she's probably a more decent person than me and a lot of the things she thinks she's not intelligent at are just things she's got no reason to care about or be good at, so who's the fool? but try as i might i kind of like myself, or at least am happy with the interests i have, and wouldn't want to wish certain habits of thinking or enjoying stuff away.

that said i do think there's a conclusion that however we delimit the idea of intelligence it's so tangled up in so many contingencies that it doesn't much confer privilege in the way that more socially unambiguous privileges exist?

One of the lenses that ive been thinking about this stuff is similar, yes

on a possibly unrelated note, there's a reason D&D separates out Intelligence and Wisdom

Well yeah, for sure

Does a preternatural appetence for trolling bespeak an above average IQ? Discuss.

Intelligence by itself is a pretty cold measure. I guess there is some correlation (thought not causation necessarily) between intelligence (or at least what we generally perceive as intelligence) and privilege, in that someone who is otherwise privileged may have more time and resources at hand to develop their own natural abilities into something more. But that’s really just privilege begetting more privilege.

If the question is just whether pure intelligence itself offers privilege or opens doors closed to others, I say no. It’s not what you have but how you use it, as they say. If I’m interviewing someone who wants a job in my company, and my top takeaway is that they are “intelligent”, I don’t think that’s a positive thing. If they have intelligence (no matter the amount) and use it in some way to make an impact, get results, create something, solve problems, etc., then that generally will express as something other than just intelligence.

Allowing that intelligences (i like the plural) should for the purposes cover all the non k12 shit like conversational acuity, artistic/sonic conceptualisation, id argue myself that theres a non-measurable practicality/innate or ingrained 'amateur engineering' talent....

For a narrow value of intelligence, I guess, though I must confess I think it unimaginative.

De-escalating conflict and getting people to agree with you is an intelligence. Knowing how to show love and have hard conversations and pursue discomfort when it's generative or necessary...is an intelligence. People can have a wealth of emotional intelligence without the kind of intellectual flex that keeps being not so subtly centered itt.

most of us "are" "intelligent" in some or many of the proviso'd forms above (and id imagine many of the less-satisfactory definitions we have taken pains to dismiss thus far).

I meannnn if you're referring to "ilxors" then it's no surprise that online conversation self-selects for--again--a specific kind of intelligence involving reading & writing & rhetorical skills (or a pretense to them anyway). But I don't think that's a value judgement? The medium exists and it suits us, more or less, so we use it. Are you trying to get an admission that an all-text message board attracts good readers and quick typists? Because that's not exactly...a hot take?

Do you want someone to say that it's harder to have a conversation with someone you don't have interests in common with? Or to indict a straw-ilxor for not having more bricklayers among their friends, or something?

Also, good morning! Just getting caffeinated, I have a couple of hours for this wrangle before I have to do some menial tasks in my isolated rural village.

Hmm id like to just ask once

Let me start again

/Bernie/

Once again i am asking you to see a thread title, and a thread

/Bernie/

I think that's working, more or less, so far!

We used to have threads around here like that, id like this to be that with no more or less boundaries than that, if ppl feel able

I for one am moving large things around for the next while so ideally the thread topic as is has already set sail some distance from the thread starter (projections on what he may or may not have *meant* even aside from that) and, i think, for the good!

So basically if it has to revolve around that, ye'll be waiting for responses but i think its better the whole thing has its own momentum from all the interesting contributions so far

Fair enough? Not snippy!

Had only a skim at some of what's here. I'd say intelligence doesn't matter, that whether you possess or not have whatever the definition of intelligence that this isn't used to deny people their basic necessities such as food, a roof, and also their ability to do things they want and develop whatever path they choose to take in life.

I'd say this is very much not the case; see for example how people interpret the resumes of people with schools and companies associated with "intelligence" fare in job searches over those who don't have those qualifications on their resumes. I used to work for a company based in Cambridge, UK that expressly forbade reading any resumes from candidates for US-based jobs who didn't have degrees from one of the top 100 universities in the country; at least half of the people I worked with at the time of acquisition, including the people who originally started the business, wouldn't have gotten an interview in the new venture. I had a coworker who was one of the better developers on the team who was targeted by upper management and laid off because he didn't have a college degree; the last I checked, he couldn't get another software job and was paying his bills by driving for Uber.

Yeah and mapping your university achievements directly to intelligence is fraught with other factors too, so again there's a lot of nonsense in the mix

The fact that credentials are a signifier that can confer privilege, but also serve to exclude non-credentialed persons exhibiting actually intelligent behaviour, seems like a good argument against intelligence itself being a privilege.

don't I deserve to to be intelligent?

Credentials as privilege? Yes. Intelligence as privilege? No.

Credentials as privilege, i think very obviously yes

Intelligence as a separate privilege, i think maybe yes also.

we'd need to identify what privileges it confers tho. maybe in a Poseidon Adventure situation? idk

maybe a privilege of being able to be more at peace in some situations now i think about it, but i'm not sure that's intelligence? does intelligence confer a veneer of chill against idk boredom or despair? lol not despair except sometimes maybe

ok maybe a different thought about how intelligence isn't sufficient to convey privilege but can convey privilege within some situations where other factors are broadly equivalent

wrt the context we both share as discussed earlier nv, i think that if jotnintelligence then a belief that one has intelligence as annavailable resource is an important locus of control motivator

Now we'll go back to how intelligence-as-reinforced to someone from all of the various refracting environments and situations is of course going to be heavily reinforced or possibly heavily underencouraged by a lot of those refractors, depending on a million things

if /not/ intelligence

ah now i hadn't considered how it might become a self-fulfilling motivator, that's a fair point. also of course a self-fulfilling demotivator, because.

i could relate the probably semi-mythical certainly semi-misunderstood story of how my old man failed his O-Levels to spite his parents and was pathologically haunted by the fact ever after

xp I think its a huge part of what the educators itt were pointing out ito what many mass production systems are doing to people who arent and look i know "intelligent"

a pathology that he couldn't help but pass down to his sons, and hence the germ of my own pathology

Lookit pathologies is another thread imo

Lol and again, maybe not ofc

you know fine well my tongue's usually at least partly cheeked

but i hadn't begun to think about what intelligence meant to let's say broad stereotype fellas of his generation, which seems to largely have been a purely financial and escape-oriented meaning, plus bitterness and a reinforced notion of the ways that class worked to thwart your self-observed intelligence

And again (and thanks for the ear, i realise that this meandering by its nature is a spiral back to a simple but big central question) then he has or there is a self-observed intelligence?

But (again, again) this is identity/experience based and not maybe in itself for our definition yet "raw/potential intelligence" but just his own soundings that he rated and merited himself as existing throughout his efforts and impacts (and in this example, a difference between his self-measured and society's measure is still not then any case towards a standalone measure, merely that- different soundings)

Hmmmm closer i think for me

/not then in any case *argument* for a standalone measure*

God this would be great pub talk tbfh

If the question is just whether pure intelligence itself offers privilege or opens doors closed to others, I say no

Hi epi

I think tbh we are still some ways away from defining what "pure intelligence" is, if it exists in any meaningful way

i think he measured out his intelligence in exams and then later some broader but vaguer self-belief that might've included trivia and swiftness of thought but those things tend to fade and leave us and i'm not sure if i wasn't defining a broad pragmatic intelligence like you've suggested - which i get, we can stick to pragmatics and individual situations - as involving a knowledge that your "intelligence" is kind of dust and only of worth in very random ways to your own sense of self. which i'd come back to as not conferring meaningful privilege but idk

This is probably a useless digression but I was thinking about someone like Maradona and his particular form of body consciousness or body intelligence (coenasthesis might be the term) and whether this form of absolute mastery is a privilege - in the sense of how we venerate biology and biological mastery, something that seems to be a law of averages thing (the world will always statically produced someone of that skill set and mastery) or almost mystically bestowed.

Are we back to "talent" there

And id find it hard to understand anyone not considering it a privilege tbh?

I don't know anyone who'd exchange it for not it.

Isnt that as good a way as any of framing it!

I always end up with Borges but I think Funes would have renounced it. I wonder if we're even fit to answer that question tbh.

Im not gonna tweak yr nose about namedropping as shorthand like that in this of all threads

NV, your post about your sister is familiar to me, I have a sister close in age who has always and still does identify herself as the "not smart" one in the family. And I mean, she knows she's plenty smart — she has a master's degree — but she struggled more in school than I did, our parents went to Stanford, she feels like the odd one out because she's not interested in a lot of the kind of intellectual pursuits the rest of us are. I hate when she refers to herself as not smart and I always reassure her it's not the case, but it's also made me understand how deeply people internalize that sense of themselves. And schools do have a lot to do with it, they absolutely reinforce the value of certain kinds of intelligence and disregard others, with the result that a whole lot of people get through school (or fail to) feeling like they're just not very smart. I think better education systems would not produce that result.

Families eh?

Hah. Tweak away. Ye made my eyes water.
xp

tipsy yeah i mean the gaps are different in my family where me going to university at all was the exceptional product of i dunno how much generational aspiration, but i was definitely thinking about how we've internalised those feelings of who/what we are along an axis of intelligence and how little it means to me the older i get. akshully age and aspiration are also big axes here when i think about it

Grind away

My sisters often butt heads and my mom thinks it's in large part due to one being a less stellar student than the other, so even in her mid 40s she still has a chip on her shoulder and tries to knock the "smart" one down a peg. She is much better than the "smart" one, and also myself (who was a better student than her also), at "practical life matters" though and I know I at least am envious of her for that. I've wondered if it's because she is motivated to prove how smart and capable she is while the smart sister and I just coasted on academic success.

I feel like I would happily (sometimes) call myself intelligent and others (not all of them) stupid in private, or in certain contexts, but the politicisation of intelligence automatically makes it seem indefensible as a concept. No one wants to admit that it exists or that they have it. I thought about taking a different position early on itt and refuting the idea of a consistent definition and all of the conditions that enable/disable it, but that seemed dishonest. Maybe I'm just a terrible person, but if we're not being post-structuralist about it, it has a general flavour, no? Just stop me if I put 'sapiosexual' in my Twitter bio.

I'm not talking about degrees of intelligence or whether it's qualitatively better or worse than other things, but imo it has often felt like the only privilege I had growing up. A privilege in that a) I experienced it as a positive thing, and b) it benefitted me as leverage away from limited opportunities. Ofc everyone's experience isn't the same, but refuting the pleasure of it is really surprising.

My kneejerk instinct is to say 'oh no, I am not clever, I am horrible'. I'll happily tell people that my music taste is 100% correct, and yet being perceived as arrogant in this specific way seems indefensible. Oh well.

I think i agree with you but as the thread has shown its an elusive thing to nail down, but I think you get where i started from alright

does this help
https://i.redd.it/13do5n1wvum31.jpg

This is why you eat the balls.

The fact that Hitler only had one explains a lot.

I wanted to stay away from "intellectualism" as class and/or political signifier itt, because it's boring and I don't think it's a useful discussion. But right now in the U.S. as soon as you start talking about class at all it's p much impossible not to implicate political orientation and loyalties. Like if someone thinks Trump is a mastermind and dead people voted in Michigan and adrenochrome, I'm going to deeply question their ability to perceive and understand the world at the very least.

I'm not mad at that star witness lady though, she was hilarious and her accent is amazing.

class is relevant to the concept in general but what class are the people who think trump is a genius?

xp yeah i feel bad for somebody like that who is awesome and funny and i side with her madness - bar the obvious racism etc - against smartarse fuckers

Anti-intellectualism is reliably correlated with power in the US, more so than in the UK ime.

yes but only for certain definitions of "power"??

i.e. electoral game-playing sure but to what extent is that actual power

Pretty sure it went over with the Mayflower.

Had only a skim at some of what's here. I'd say intelligence doesn't matter, that whether you possess or not have whatever the definition of intelligence that this isn't used to deny people their basic necessities such as food, a roof, and also their ability to do things they want and develop whatever path they choose to take in life.

I'd say this is very much not the case; see for example how people interpret the resumes of people with schools and companies associated with "intelligence" fare in job searches over those who don't have those qualifications on their resumes. I used to work for a company based in Cambridge, UK that expressly forbade reading any resumes from candidates for US-based jobs who didn't have degrees from one of the top 100 universities in the country; at least half of the people I worked with at the time of acquisition, including the people who originally started the business, wouldn't have gotten an interview in the new venture. I had a coworker who was one of the better developers on the team who was targeted by upper management and laid off because he didn't have a college degree; the last I checked, he couldn't get another software job and was paying his bills by driving for Uber.

― DJP, Friday, 4 December 2020 14:45 (three hours ago) link

Sorry yes garbled that bit. Agree that academic credentials (one way that is used to define intelligence) are often used to downgrade people for roles that have material consequences. Or that the fact you have a piece of paper should upgrade you automatically.

Ideally we should not use these and whatever our capacities are should not deprive anyone of their basic needs.

Anti-intellectualism is reliably correlated with power in the US, more so than in the UK ime.

― pomenitul, Friday, December 4, 2020 6:00 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yes but only for certain definitions of "power"??

― Uptown Top Scamping (Noodle Vague), Friday, December 4, 2020 6:01 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's inextricable with the political right wing/populist project, for sure, and to some degree they've been accumulating power for--what--fifty years now?

oh yeah but their electoral power is arguably not the base of their power?

"not the base" is wrong but i hope you get me, i'm cynical about the extent of the power of government in itself

Hi epi

Hey dmac. Good seeing you again lately.

Ugh, I have spent so much time eyerolling at this thread and now I find I have a post I want to make in it. I still think i was right upthread but I also think that it has made me think, even inadvertently, about the subject.

My family have always valued ‘intelligence’ - both my parents are the cleverest children in their respective families, our house was always full of books, and I was their first child so they read to me, they helped me with homework, and they encouraged me in everything I took an interest in. When I was a very small child and was interested in dinosaurs, my father took time off work to bring me to Dublin’s natural history museum... which has no dinosaurs. Still, I never forgot that day out.

I was always very good in school, and fast too, which is a terrible combination because it makes you lazy, and that’s where the notion of ‘intelligence’ falls down, where application meets reality. Because once you have someone who realises they don’t need to put in so much effort to do well, and therefore does not, it produces a terrible terrible person. Do I wish I had worked harder at school and university? Definitely, because it took me a considerable amount of time in later life to build up anything approaching a work ethic, diligence, focus... things that people learn at an early age. This has carried through to work as well, and i think it has not really served me well either. I have never really known what I want to do with my life, and so I have done a series of jobs without any sense of where I should go in a long term sense or what I could do that would make use of ability that, tbh, I am not making a huge amount of use out of.

But kinds of intelligence are as important as application, because they are valuable in different ways but are not necessarily... valued. If you are the kind of person who can deliver a presentation oblivious to the audience you are delivering it to, without caring that their eyes are glazing over or they’re checking their phones, well, you’re a bit lacking in social intelligence at the very least. Am broadly unconvinced of the efficacy of presentations for most kinds of learning for this reason btw - there’s no point in being a very clever person delivering information if your presentation skills are causing the audience to think about what shopping they need, or how much they’d like to chuck that glass of water at you.

I mentioned briefly last night, but there are lots of jobs using skills that society undervalues that draw on intelligence that is undervalued by society. Or as I said, more pithily, “any cunt can work in an office.” Having worked, at various times, in retail, in a bookies and in a restaurant, that kind of work requires you to think and act fast, think on your feet, and read people. For this reason, if I am ever involved in hiring/sifting cvs for any reason I am always interested in people who’ve worked retail for example, because they are skills that will work well in an office environment. Especially if they have worked there for any length of time - give me someone who’s worked on a shopfloor over someone who’s got no idea how to interact with other people but went to the right university.

Of course the latter is the thing that will really get you in the door and it’s true, a lot of graduates are highly intelligent people, but it’s the application I return to time and time again. Does a degree matter if you don’t use it, or is it just a way of screening out the riff-raff? I know which one I believe.

I do genuinely enjoy talking to people from different backgrounds or work environments from myself, because I like to hear people talk about the context of their working lives and how they talk about the way they go about their business because it reveals something of themselves. I always talk to taxi drivers if they talk to me first* because I have no spatial ability at all, and I am interested in the kind of things you pick up travelling constantly talking to all kinds of people. It might be because I am a person who likes to do things and learn by doing that I find it so interesting, but I have learned so many interesting things over the years from talking to taxi drivers. For example: the thing on the wall outside my house is a boot-scraper and in this area they date back to (year).That this particular building was the scene of a highly controversial event in (year). The best places to see the sun rise and set. Being diaspora when someone is being bigoted without realising or caring who they are talking to.

My point is, besides the fact I love to shite on a lot, is that we can never hope to scratch the surface of the minds of other people, but it is sometimes so rewarding to try. And again driving a taxi is something that is considered to be unskilled but fuck me, I couldn’t do it. I can’t even drive.

Anyway, to try to address the notion in the first place: yes and no. Xyzzzz__ is really correct when he talks about material circumstances constraining a lot of bright or otherwise talented and able people from achieving their true potential. In that case, is their intelligence a privilege in the way that you are asking? Perhaps it helps them to make sense of their world, perhaps it causes them great anger at how fucking unfair it is, perhaps they take solace in writing or reading or their insight. There are lots of people who may not have formal education but who are autodidacts and have a huge reservoir of knowledge that they have accumulated for their own pleasure and understanding, but they are not recognised as such because they didn’t learn it the “right” way.

I guess if I had to say the thing I personally value about intelligence is always wanting to learn more, to do more, to build and build and grow. To not be lazy. I think my early jobs spending time where I had some of that part of my personality fairly bluntly knocked into order were pretty good for me.

I always like and fear ilx a bit because it is full of very bright people and it’s a place where you can always log on to feel stupid in comparison. That for me is good, because it reminds me not to be lazy, to seek out and to and think more, and to read different ways people think and construct arguments helps me with mine too. You know, when I’m not just being a cunt. It can also be intimidating, but for me that’s less of a problem maybe, because I have no problem admitting where i am ignorant and where I could know more - and the best life skill of all you can learn is to shut the fuck up occasionally and leave space for other people.

I’m going to take my own advice now and wind up this mess of a post which has gone from head to phone with nothing in between, but damn you, the subject interested me.

*childhood applied knowledge = learning that some people like to talk as they drive and some really really don’t.

Lol you caved

I've always been Mr Could Try Harder but I dunno, I don't feel like I could. Or should, even

Too much like hard work. That should be on my headstone. Not that I'll have one.

Important to remember that the work ethic is a force for evil

xxp you def should, you are very smart and insightful, just as long as you don’t use it to benefit your wsos or something

Lol I don't think there's any danger of our leaders or anybody else finding me smashable

'Fulfilling one's potential' is a phrase that scares the shit out of me and strikes me as the kind of phrase that brings the doctors running across the lawn. What would that look like? Or what metric do we use to measure it?

lol gyac, I didn't expect you to take the bait, but at least you did so with flying colours.

Its a lovely trick the whole of ilx has played on the two of ye

Having a thread, like.

smh

Yup. I've said this elsewhere, but:

When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked as a minimum-wage lunch recess monitor at a hippie school in Brentwood, California. My closest coworker was a sad-sack and incredibly brainy woman her late sixties, with THREE PhDs, a string of still-friendly ex-husbands she'd lived with all around the world, a purple streak in her hair, and a mammoth chip on her shoulder. One of her PhDs was in plastics engineering, one was in art history, and one was in psych (?). One of the ex-husbands was a B-list TV actor, and another ex-husband owned a hammam in Istanbul. She lived with a woman now. She grew a dozen strains of weed in her backyard and gave it away to hospice patients. She had two gorgeous daughters, one of whom was a touring dancer. For both off us, the recess-monitoring our only income, and we stuck with it because we were in debt and it was the recession. I talked with her about how I saw the job as a stop-over on my way to a brilliant career in TV writing; I assumed that this was just a day-to-day gig for my coworker. After working together for half a year, I finally asked her how she'd ended up in at a minimum-wage school job. She reacted poorly, and answered through a lot of tears "I was once very smart, but I kept going to school and I never found my calling." I think she might've even left the job early that day. It all made me very uncomfortable.

Throughout my twenties, while I was trying to "find myself" I'd think of her as a certified Tragic Figure, because she hadn't found herself, and that was somehow upsetting. But after a decade it occurred to me that the real tragedy wasn't that she hadn't found her calling, or whatever, but that she had gone to school three times, lived an amazing and rich life, and was for some reason upset about the inadequacy of her experience. I'd always thought of her as a brilliant figure, but I think that in retrospect she was kind of a self-centered moron.

^ The difference between wanting to be a good person and wanting to do great things.

Nothing wrong with ambition. Nor with a lack of ambition, for that matter.

*intelligence as privilege* settles down to read The Observer over a cup of Coffee on a cloudy Sunday mornibg

I've read 20 more posts in this thread, including the one that said I was otm.

🤣🤣🤣

Absolutely exceptional #struggle tweets here. pic.twitter.com/n0eehDvdR9

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) December 6, 2020

A life experience that may be related to the thread topic: My would-be egalitarian parents, who are both sort of intellectual snobs but also very politically lefty, decided that the "gifted students" program at my middle school was elitist. There wasn't a whole lot to the program, every few weeks a group of us would get to miss a regular class period and get together to work on various projects, puzzles, things to challenge us, I don't even remember. But my parents didn't like it. They didn't exactly forbid me from participating, but they did guilt me about it a bit to the extent that I didn't feel good taking part and dropped out. The teacher who ran the program was fairly baffled by this reaction but basically just shrugged and said OK. The consequence being that during those class periods I had to sit in my deathly dull English class and diagram sentences instead of doing fun stuff with my friends.

In subsequent years my parents have agreed with me that this was a pretty dumb reaction and we weren't exactly striking a blow against the empire by forcing me to sit in a boring class. That said, it instilled in me an awareness that being "smart" was neither something I should take for granted nor feel superior about.

(likewise, my parents actively discouraged me from applying to elite universities. I don't know that I would have anyway, or that I would have gotten in, but it's kind of hilarious for me to think about given the modern frenzy abut trying to get kids into top-tier programs)

Gifted programs can absolutely fuck off. I understand the value of giving kids an appropriate level of challenge, but the framing is harmful to kids in and out of the program.

My elementary school had a fucked up rule that only kids in the ‘smart’ English class (which comprised a quarter of the grade) could have speaking roles in class plays. Looking back I don’t know how that didn’t get ripped to pieces.

We also had a separate gifted program based on Iowa test scores where you had an after school meeting once every six weeks to do... stuff.

Heh, your parents sound like the exact opposite of immigrant parents from poorer nations.

2xp

Yeah, it was an odd kind of virtue signaling. They had gone to elite schools themselves and felt guilty about it as counterculture types, so I became a vehicle for that I guess.

Gifted programs can absolutely fuck off. I understand the value of giving kids an appropriate level of challenge, but the framing is harmful to kids in and out of the program.

Yeah the naming and framing of it is problematic for sure.

i attended elementary school before the mania for TAG programs emerged. The nearest analog was that in seventh grade I was given the chance to take a German language class, incompetently taught by a teacher who couldn't speak a word of German, and in eighth grade took an algebra class from a dour bad-tempered teacher nobody could stand.

otoh, I'm not sorry I missed out on TAG classes. There was already more than enough tracking of kids into 'bright' and 'dumb' categories.

there are ppl whom it's hard to be friends with because of a gap in [insert extended caveat] intelligence

i have a hard time getting along with my best friend's bf, a computer scientist who wrecks our asses at board-games and constantly zaps logical or factual gaps in my arguments on any topic of conversation. even though i admire him, it's intimidating. and he's not even condescending; i genuinely learn a lot from him! i have friends who are prob as smart (but are day-ones or compensate in other dimensions) but it's like i can feel the glare of his throbbing brain as a physical presence

about 7 years ago i went on a longish road-trip with some casual friends who i knew from the music scene; people whose company i had enjoyed for years in the context of chatting at shows and bars. after being stuck in a car with them for 5 days, i felt like i had uncovered a boundary between us. it's not that i think they're dumb, but the paths some of the long ~deep~ conversations took were so unsatisfying and frustrating to me. and it's not just a "you hate anyone after a road trip" thing, because i've gone on longer trips that created lasting bonds. it was mutual, too; i could tell they felt a similar way to me as i feel toward my friends' bf. it got a bit tense. we're still friends and i love to chat with them

It doesn't help that a lot of, and perhaps most, genuinely stupid people are as mean as snakes.

I have a phobia about appearing stupid, partially because my mother kept warning me about it. I tend to gray rock everyone because of this, which probably does make me look stupid. It's a vicious cycle.

even though i admire him, it's intimidating. and he's not even condescending

I would hope that lack of condescension is based on his knowledge that superiority at board games and a facility with logical argument are merely nice gifts to have, not transcendent talents or a sound basis for constructing a happy life. My unsolicited advice would be to just reconcile yourself to getting the tar beaten out of you at board games and enjoy his friendship in other ways.

it’s not intimidating because i think he has a transcendent talent or a sound basis for constructing a happy life, i just don’t like being the dumb guy in the group :)

his bf (my best friend) is a similar level of dumb as me, and they’re in love, so clearly it’s not impossible to transgress this boundary

I'm always the smart guy in the room/friend group, and I'm not here, I think that's what brings me always back to this dreadful place

My supervisor at my old job in a high tech company liked to refer to the place as a "sheltered workshop for the the very bright".

Ok, I’m a bit touchy when if comes to people bagging on gifted programming. It’s not about elitism but rather teaching within a different framework that serves certain kids better. I have two kids that we in no way pushed or coached to be identified as gifted, but who were tested by the schools and found to be unusual by those standards. We initially opted to have them just accommodated within the normal school setting, maybe just with some extra challenges, but they both (at different times) suffered, were ostracized by the other kids, and began to hide who they were and adopted bad habits. Their difference was a burden to them. We relented, accepted some inconvenience, and moved them to self contained programming where the change was stark and they began to thrive. I do notice that some parents actively strive to get their kids into the program, but I think they miss the true purpose, that it’s special education to address special needs. I do have some concerns about them having to reintegrate into the “normal” spectrum at high school level and beyond, but by then you can do more self selection of peers. Some of you might say you’re against such things, yet here you are, like, here.

My elementary school had a fucked up rule that only kids in the ‘smart’ English class (which comprised a quarter of the grade) could have speaking roles in class plays. Looking back I don’t know how that didn’t get ripped to pieces.

What the FUCK

my junior high featured teachers that would join in with the bullies in making fun of the intelligent kids, because really, who wants to do or talk about, much less grade homework? it's not like any of our families had enough money for our futures to matter