EPTOn October 31 2015 10:47 IgnE wrote:
No such thing as intelligence?
No such thing as intelligence?
Duh. What are you, stupid?
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2473
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killa_robot
Canada1884 Posts
Duh. What are you, stupid? | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18215 Posts
On October 30 2015 09:13 notesfromunderground wrote: Let's return to the original question. Who here thinks it is possible to scientifically quantify a person's level of intelligence? (ok, while y'all are pondering that one and wondering if you have the courage to step up to the plate and actually defend such a ludicrous belief, I have to go study greek. Pro tip: If you value your sanity, don't take greek. This has really been a delight. I wish my students were this enthusiastic). How about you start by giving a sound definition of intelligence, and then we'll continue this (dumb) discussion. Also, I took ancient Greek in high school, and enjoyed it more than Latin, although the grammar is even more frustrating. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23642 Posts
On October 31 2015 12:45 Acrofales wrote: How about you start by giving a sound definition of intelligence, and then we'll continue this (dumb) discussion. Also, I took ancient Greek in high school, and enjoyed it more than Latin, although the grammar is even more frustrating. I remember hearing a decent definition along the lines of "ability to interpret, incorporate, and utilize new and existing information". | ||
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
But then, of course, "in videogames there's no difference between theory and 'reality', for the game's code serves simultaneously as both 'reality' and model." So I guess that doesn't help us, because clearly this is not true for the relation between scientific theories and reality... | ||
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
But how do I know that they are intelligent now? Because you've had moments with them where they revealed this quality - where they surprised you or something alike. The key factor is not their identity, their essence (being or not intelligent) but the moment (where you, with your own history, see value in a specific comment or behavior) : everybody can be intelligent in the right moment, in the right field. Some studies showed trisomic had genius level of empathy that could help them understand almost instantly the state of mind of anyone after a quick look at their body gestures and whatnot : in certain specific moment they could show tremendous intelligence in understanding others, more than you and I would never be able to. Problem with politicians and overall rich people today is that their life is, on average, so uneventful that they rarely surprise anyone (or badly, as a sad and pointless action to get out of their condition, like britney spears lol), that's why most of them look stupid (and that's basically inversed class racism and I'm fine with it, hahahaha). Going back to Trump and other republicans, there is something that you should assess : why is it that so many people would vote for him ? Don't they see how "stupid" he is ? There are many possible answers : either they resent all the other candidates and they want the world to burn, or they can't assess the intelligence of someone like you do, or they see truthness in his discourse despite the way it is phrased. I suppose the best answer is a little of all that, but I prefer understanding what he is about rather than caricaturing his candidacy just because he act like a stupid rich dude on cocaine (which I am already sure he is). He is very much like our own FN in France : someone that break the old bondaries between left and right. I personally like that contradiction (altho I'm almost entirely against anything those people have to propose) because it bears value in regards to politics in our world. | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
everybody can be intelligent in the right moment, in the right field. That's exactly what i meant when i said "i've never seen an unintelligent person". One of the biggest "indicators" for intelligence in a subjective way (or as every person perceives it with his own definitions) is simply the social background that person lived in. And that's simply down to the fact that there's hundreds of different definitions out there for what we perceive as intelligent. In fact, i'm not convinced that there's necessarily a difference between capabilities at all between two brains. According to Baldurs Gate, intelligence determines how many spells I can learn. According to Fallout New Vegas, on the other hand, intelligence determines how many skill points I receive each level. But which one is it?? But then, of course, "in videogames there's no difference between theory and 'reality', for the game's code serves simultaneously as both 'reality' and model." So I guess that doesn't help us, because clearly this is not true for the relation between scientific theories and reality... Missed that one when i typed - very good analogy. | ||
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
On October 31 2015 21:37 m4ini wrote: And that's simply down to the fact that there's hundreds of different definitions out there for what we perceive as intelligent. In fact, i'm not convinced that there's necessarily a difference between capabilities at all between two brains. Missed that one when i typed - very good analogy. Some people are naturally taller than others, some people are born with mental handicaps; there is a great deal of variation in the human species. It would seem so strange that in this particular case, the capability of one's intelligence doesn't vary. Just in the extreme case, if you take someone who is mentally retarded, would you say that there is no fundamental difference in their capability; that if they work long enough they can be a professor of mathematics? If its true in the extreme case, isn't it also probably true in the case of just being' slightly more' capable, or 'largely more' capable? I would find it odd if the human brain were binary in the sense that it would be either extremely capable or just generally capable, without there being any range in between unlike every other human characteristic, e.g.the eye's ability to resolve far away objects. Its certainly not a rigorous argument but I think its more likely to be true than not. It seems more unbelievable to think that everyone could become like Carl Friedrich Gauss, or Newton if they studied in school enough? This idea that it's all nurture, but not nature, even though we are for the most part defined by our genes is very strange. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28739 Posts
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On November 01 2015 05:08 radscorpion9 wrote: Some people are naturally taller than others, some people are born with mental handicaps; there is a great deal of variation in the human species. It would seem so strange that in this particular case, the capability of one's intelligence doesn't vary. Just in the extreme case, if you take someone who is mentally retarded, would you say that there is no fundamental difference in their capability; that if they work long enough they can be a professor of mathematics? If its true in the extreme case, isn't it also probably true in the case of just being' slightly more' capable, or 'largely more' capable? I would find it odd if the human brain were binary in the sense that it would be either extremely capable or just generally capable, without there being any range in between unlike every other human characteristic, e.g.the eye's ability to resolve far away objects. Its certainly not a rigorous argument but I think its more likely to be true than not. It seems more unbelievable to think that everyone could become like Carl Friedrich Gauss, or Newton if they studied in school enough? This idea that it's all nurture, but not nature, even though we are for the most part defined by our genes is very strange. Some people are better than others at math, even from a genetical standpoint if you want to see it that way, but it does not mean that they are more intelligent, because intelligence is not resumed to the capacity to do math. That's the main point. You have no way to actually prove that someone better at math will necessarily be better to survive in a deserted area, to draw a battle plan or to play basketball. Intelligence is all of that (there is a good definition given by someone before) : it's the capacity to adapt to a specific situation. The situation being diverse and people being diverse, even if you are better in specific field it is impossible to tell that you are more intelligent because of that. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Even if you could quantify their policymaking intelligence (or whatever), that shouldn't relevant when you are evaluating their policies or arguments. Saying "this person's past arguments were poor, therefore this new argument is poor" is a fallacy in deductive logic after all (most common in the scientific literature and politics). + Show Spoiler + As a sidebar, it's also not very easy to use probabilistic logic to say "this new argument is likely poor" because there's no way you've been exposed to all their arguments to get a valid denominator, since your news outlet probably is only going to report ones that either sound very good or very bad. You can only say "the next argument I hear about is likely to be poor" really, and even that doesn't mean much. Instead, people should be saying "This argument by XYZ for policy P is a stupid argument because it is not logically coherent and/or is founded on false premises." Indeed, this is exactly what Kasich did at the last debate when talking about the others' budget plans. Pity that doesn't fit in the 15 second sound bits they need to generate for the media. Also, I just realized how much that debate made me crave a Democratic debate on Fox News. Please please please please please do it | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
Clearly you want to elect somebody who you think is intelligent enough to make good decisions in response to the kinds of problems that a political leader will face while in office. I also don't buy this argument that intelligence is unknowable because maths prowess won't help you out in a desert. Saying that I would rather have a sherpa with an iq of 85 take me up Mt Everest rather than Goethe seems to me not to be about intelligence, as such, at all. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Is there every really a case where you would elect a candidate whose policies you disagree with because of some bizarre, Edit: Semi-mystical is probably a better phrase here. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
The point is that I think you are secretly taking intelligence, according to some definition, into account when you are comparing Kasich to the other candidates. You are just being dishonest about evaluating what you claim is only the content of their proposals. I'm not even sure what that would mean because most proposals have built-in value judgments that are not amenable to this technocratic analysis you claim is best. (Ignoring the obviously stupid ones where the math doesn't make sense according to any logic). | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
There's no shortage of people who can design reasonable policies, the hard part is deciding which ones to use, and in optimizing them. | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
On November 01 2015 05:08 radscorpion9 wrote: Some people are naturally taller than others, some people are born with mental handicaps; there is a great deal of variation in the human species. It would seem so strange that in this particular case, the capability of one's intelligence doesn't vary. Just in the extreme case, if you take someone who is mentally retarded, would you say that there is no fundamental difference in their capability; that if they work long enough they can be a professor of mathematics? If its true in the extreme case, isn't it also probably true in the case of just being' slightly more' capable, or 'largely more' capable? I would find it odd if the human brain were binary in the sense that it would be either extremely capable or just generally capable, without there being any range in between unlike every other human characteristic, e.g.the eye's ability to resolve far away objects. Its certainly not a rigorous argument but I think its more likely to be true than not. It seems more unbelievable to think that everyone could become like Carl Friedrich Gauss, or Newton if they studied in school enough? This idea that it's all nurture, but not nature, even though we are for the most part defined by our genes is very strange. Yes, i'd actually argue that a mentally handicapped person is not necessarily more stupid than a healthy person. Actually, i absolutely hate the "professor of mathematics" crap - it actually doesn't mean "intelligent", just because you can math. In fact, some mental challenges (autism) improve mathematical capabilities. By your measure, autistic people are more intelligent than "normal" people. Apart from the obvious problem that it's not two "intact" brains compared, it's like asking me what's faster - a supercar or a car that's missing the accelerator? And i don't know - there has to be alot more than what you assume there is to intelligence. Newton was intelligent. Einstein was intelligent. They looked at the same problem, one of them could not solve it. Why? Keep in mind that Einstein first developed his theory theoretically, then had it checked (it was a pure brainstorm, no technological advancement). So is Newton a stupid person now? He could've done exactly the same. I kinda have trouble explaining myself decently since english isn't my first language - but you got one thing right. There's no such thing (to me) as "black and white". Sure there is differences, but they're not as large as people make it ought to be. I said earlier, many "definitions" come down to your social background. Are brazils favelas only populated by stupid people, because they can't make their live worth living (by our standards)? What if Einstein had a different education, i.e. not Gymnasium, but a Volksschule (a lower standard of education, basically like university and college, just a bigger difference) - would he still be able to come up with the theory of relativity? My point is, up to this point, there's no definition for intelligence. Hell, if i think long enough about it, i might even argue that something like "Intelligence" in the sense of how we perceive it doesn't even exist, but that it works differently. As in, there's not a single overall "Intelligence", but many different "brain-skillsets that are developed independently" (sorry, i just can't put it better in english). Maybe quantum-biology will reveal some new things about human brains (as it did for bird brains). | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5299 Posts
if a monkey brain knows all those states you have a very intelligent but useless monkey. you could always argue that intelligence alone is not enough which is true but that's another thing. | ||
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Toadesstern
Germany16350 Posts
On November 01 2015 08:05 TheTenthDoc wrote: You should elect people based on whether or not the policies they say they will implement will be better than the other candidates as well as any enumerated policy positions about hypothetical future happenings (like "I will not invade Iran unless XYZ"). Of course, there is also a trust element involved (which is why incumbents are generally better off). Is there every really a case where you would elect a candidate whose policies you disagree with because of some bizarre, Edit: Semi-mystical is probably a better phrase here. not to mention, as much as people like to stress on the vote of who becomes president, or for that matter who becomes chancelor in Germany and so on... it's not as if it's just those guys although the media makes it look that way. People even in that position, or rather especially in that kind of position have counselors and in the end those people (hopefully) are way more influentual within their given field than any one overarching person. | ||
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TheTenthDoc
United States9561 Posts
Sure, a lot of policies can't be categorized that way, but those are the subjective policies based on relative values that the democratic process is supposed to help us compromise with each other on. It's the difference between "I want to stop gay marriage because marriage should be between a man and a woman" (not "stupid" though it may be other things) and "I want to stop gay marriage because the children of gay couples would be better off with a father in prison than no father at all" (that's one of Rick Santorum's policies). On November 01 2015 08:10 zlefin wrote: I'd like to elect people not based on the policies they currently propose, but based on their ability to craft new policies in response to changing conditions, as well as to update those policies as necessary; as well as their ability to judge which policies are best. There's no shortage of people who can design reasonable policies, the hard part is deciding which ones to use, and in optimizing them. Most of the actual crafting to changing conditions has nothing to do with the people you elect anyway, so you'll have trouble there. Regulators and appointed executive branch officials do most of the policy updating and crafting. I also don't think there would ever be a situation where someone would agree with candidate A's policies but think that candidate B should be president because he'll be somehow better able to react to changing circumstances. Even if they do, there's (almost) no logically sound objective way you could make the latter determination. Edit: I'm also not sure how "ability to judge which policies are best" is really a separate quality from "quality of the policies they currently propose" most of the time, but I guess they are slightly different. Edit2: I guess it also comes down to this: saying "I don't know the definition of a p value" isn't stupid, but saying "the definition of a p value is the probability the null hypothesis is true" is. But just because someone says either of those things doesn't mean they're "unintelligent." At least in my mind. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
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