We rail against leftists and progressives here but it has to be admitted that they do seem to be pretty well educated compared to the average population and that a lot of people who belong to the intellectual sectors of society whether it be in academia or STEM professions tend to trend towards the left. These people at the same time, despite their intelligence seem to have a tendency to gravitate towards grand, idealistic theories about how society should be remade that while good on paper tend crumble in the real world. This has given to stereotypes such as the autistic neckbeard or if you want to be a bit kinder, the absent-minded professor.

Here's a blog article by a psychiatrist where he discusses his theory on why these people exhibit these sort of traits:

http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/20...ommon.html

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In the course of exploring this modern divergence between social-adaptation and biological-adaptation, Satoshi Kanazawa has made the insightful observation that a high level of general intelligence is mainly useful in dealing with life problems which are an evolutionary novelty. By contrast, performance in solving problems which were a normal part of human life in the ancestral hunter–gatherer era may not be helped (or may indeed be hindered) by higher IQ [9] and [10].

--

Kanazawa’s idea is that there is therefore a contrast between recurring, mainly social problems which affected fitness for our ancestors and for which all normal humans have evolved behavioural responses; and problems which are an evolutionary novelty but which have a major impact on individual functioning in the context of modern societies [9] and [10]. When a problem is an evolutionary novelty, individual differences in general intelligence make a big difference to each individual’s abilities to analyze the problem, and learn to how solve it. So, the idea is that having a high IQ would predict a better ability in understanding and dealing with new problems; but higher IQ would not increase the level of a person’s common sense ability to deal with social situations.

To apply this to game, this is difference between the natural and a guy like Mystery. The natural gets bang simply based on the instincts that have been honed into him by a combination of nature and nurture. Mystery didn't have these instincts and instead used his intelligence to study human mating behavior in almost the way a scientist studying apes would and created an entire model and theory around it.

Anyone else ever notice that it's usually leftist types always pushing stuff like polyamory or gay marriage or gender fluid nonsense, basically anything that differs wildly from current social norms? Charlton suspects it's because desire for novelty or "Openness" as he calls it is correlated with having a high IQ.

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"For example, in some populations there is a positive correlation between IQ and the personality trait of Openness to experience (‘Openness’) [18] and [19]; a positive correlation with ‘enlightened’ or progressive values of a broadly socialist and libertarian type [20]; and a negative correlation with religiousness [21]."

"Indeed, I suggest that higher levels of the personality trait of Openness in higher IQ people may the flip-side of this over-use of abstraction. I regard Openness as the result of deploying abstract analysis for social problems to yield unstable and unpredictable results, when innate social intelligence would tend to yield predictable and stable results. This might plausibly underlie the tendency of the most intelligent people in modernizing societies to hold ‘left-wing’ political views [10] and [20]."

"I would argue that neophilia (or novelty-seeking) is a driving attribute of the personality trait of Openness; and a disposition common in adolescents and immature adults who display what I have termed ‘psychological neoteny’ [23] and [24]. When problems are analyzed using common sense ‘instincts’ the evaluative process would be expected to lead to the same answers in all normal humans, and these answers are likely to be stable over time. But when higher IQ people ignore or over-ride common sense, they generate a variety of uncommon ideas. Since these ideas are only feebly-, or wholly un-, supported by emotions; they are held more weakly than common sense ideas, and so are more likely to change over time.

For instance, a group of less intelligent people using instinctive social intelligence to analyze a social situation will presumably reach the same traditional conclusion as everyone else and this conclusion will not change with time; while a more intelligent group might by contrast use abstract analysis and generate a wider range of novel and less-compelling solutions. This behaviour appears as if motivated by novelty-seeking."

Why so many of these intelligent people exhibit traits that suggest autism:

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In suggesting that the most intelligent people tend to use IQ to over-ride common sense I am unsure of the extent to which this is due to a deficit in the social reasoning ability, perhaps due to a trade-off between cognitive abilities – as suggested by Baron-Cohen’s conceptualization of Asperger’s syndrome, including the male- versus female-type of systematizing/empathizing brain [22]. Or alternatively it could be more of an habitual tendency to over-use abstract analysis, that might (in principle) be overcome by effort or with training. Observing the apparent universality of ‘Silly Clevers’ in modernizing societies, I suspect that a higher IQ bias towards over-utilizing abstract reasoning would probably turn-out to be innate and relatively stable.

Social science are being ruined by these autists due to a combination of their desire for novelty and also because use their intelligence in a way that works for abstract theories but not for actual flesh and blood people. The latter deals with more in common sense.

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But getting answers to problems in science involving human social behaviour is something which is already done very well by evolved human psychological mechanisms [13], [14], [15] and [16]. In this situation it is difficult to improve on common sense, and – even without being taught – normal people already have a pretty good understanding of human motivations, incentives and deterrents, and the basic cause and effect processes of society. Because psychological and social intelligence expertise is so widespread and adaptive; in order to advertise his intelligence the social scientist must produce something systematically-different from common sense, something novel and (necessarily) counter-intuitive. And because it goes against evolved psychology, in this instance something different is likely to be something wrong. So, the social scientist professional deploying abstract reasoning on social problems is often less likely to generate a correct answer than the average member of the public who is using the common sense of evolved, spontaneous social intelligence.

The results of cognitive stratification and IQ-advertising are therefore bad enough to have destroyed the value of whole domains of the arts and academia, and in the domain of public policy the results have been simply disastrous. Over the past four decades the dishonest fantasy-world discourse of non-biological political correctness has evolved to dominate the intellectual arena of whole nations – perhaps the whole developed world – such that wrong and ridiculous ideas have become not just mainstream, but compulsory.

Because clever silliness is not just one of several competing ideas in the elite arena – it is both intellectually- and moralistically-enforced with such zeal as utterly to exclude alternatives [32]. The first level of defence is that denying a PC assertion is taken as proof of dumbness or derangement; such that flat-denial without refutation is regarded as sufficient response. But the toughest enforcement is moral: anyone smart and sane who disbelieves the silly clever falsehoods and asserts something different is not just denounced as dumb but actually pilloried as evil [33].

In my opinion, this is the most defining idea in the essay.

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So, the greater cognitive ability of higher IQ is also accompanied by a somewhat distinctive high IQ personality type. My suggested explanation for this association is that an increasing level of IQ brings with it an increased tendency to use general intelligence in problem-solving; i.e. to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense.

So next time you see some super educated autistic honor student suggest the world would be better off if everyone gave up guns, if we let unlimited third world immigrants within first world nations, and everyone gave up jealousy and greed and such - you'll know the reason for why they think the way they do. It's because they operate in the realm of theory and only associate with other autists like themselves and don't realize that the majority of flesh and blood people don't think the same way they do and won't go along with their program.

Guess I'm an outlier much like Trump.

Highly intelligent yet laugh at left wing nutjobs for their warped sense of reality.

Eh, I'd say the problem is that the braying masses of mankind use their cis-brained privilege and lump all smart people together. Unfortunately, the "smart" people who wave their academic credentials around and squawk loudly about untenable political philosophies are generally still in the fairly thick (get it?) region of the bell curve.

Think about it, when they want to do a PBS special on how guns are bad and hurt puppies, who do they bring in as an expert? Well they get some sociology dipshit, dress him up to look like professor Nerdstein for credibility, and set him loose. An engineer or scientist might instead talk about designing guns that only work in their owner's hands for safety. An economist would point out the massive black market that would spring up in response to a gun ban. They don't let these guys on PBS documentaries.

This is why world destroyers like Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Ghenghis Khan and Cortez are so unique. They had off the charts intelligence but a grasp of the practical to accomplish their end goals. Masters and destroyers of worlds.

I think its because a lot of "intellectuals" don't go out into the real world. More so, I think its because many academic types build their ego on their sense of "high intelligence" and as a result, don't consider other opinions as often as they need to.

Theres also something to be said for people with high intelligence lacking real world social intelligence. They lack the realization to understand that while some ideas sound good in theory, they do not work well at all when applied.

Those with high intelligence or mental aptitude are coddled into a sphere almost completely divergant from the rest of mainstream society. This begins in elementary school with gifted and honors classes and carries forth through college. I know because I experienced it firsthand

Instead of attending a pre-university high school comprised of the 'elite,' I, for geographical reasons (namely, I didn't want to continue making 1-1.5hr bus rides the morning and afternoon and neither me nor my father was in a position to provide me with a 'free' car) I chose to attend a 'normal' but very good public high school. I find that to be my most valuable unforseen choices in my life as it resulted in me obtain a decent (albeit mildly unchallenging) education in an environ where I was exposed to people from all economic and social backgrounds, abling me to see how the 'real world' functioned. Also, my father at the time was a general superintendent for a steel fabrication firm, so my weekends and days off consisted of doing homework in the backseat of his car while we drove the state checking out job sites and meeting all sorts of 'regular' people - from Mexican laborers to redneck welders to foreign company reps. You can't put a pricetag on real-life experiences.

Going back to how acadamia can stunt practical growth, remember that high-functioning people concentrate their studies in the theoretical in a world of formulas and perfection where 2 +2 = 4 and constants always are. In the actual world, the only constant is perpetual change. That's why these high-concept 'feel good' thoughts and social welfare programs work so good on paper...and fail so miserably in the real world.

Sometimes, these 'intellectuals' are the easiest to convince, too. My easiest retail car deals have been to doctors, professors, teachers, and the like. Just tell them what they want to hear in a convincing manner and they're done.

^ bingo

Modern life and the comforts thereof make it possible for highly intelligent people to survive, maybe even thrive, without dealing with the difficulties of failure. They can be protected, in a near sterile environment, and go completely autistic over details. Thousands of years ago this wouldn't have been possible without the individual starving or being beat to death. Now, harmful thoughts can incubate without the hard test of reality, or even spread and become viral, like memes.

It's not a coincidence that Marxism was invented by a privileged, rich son that didn't have to work a day in his life.

Comfort without hardship is deadly and regressive. Hence the cyclical nature of empires.

Western society has also become a place where social intelligence or emotional intelligence is way more valuable in the long run.

Your ability to hustle and adapt yourself to increasingly difficult and treacherous social situations while making connections is critical. I'm a firm believer that a guy with high EQ who can hustle in the west will make more in his lifetime and enjoy life more on average than your typical book smart high IQ intellectual.

The people who impact the world especially with regards to STEM fields are definitely high intelligence types though. However how much enjoyment and satisfaction they receive from the fruits of their labor is another matter altogether.

Remember, this is an untested hypothesis.

My own untested hypothesis: he's confusing the Autistic type of Intelligence with the Illusory Superiority Intelligence (100-120), that peters out once the capacity for independent learning kicks in at 120 or so.

The social world is not a particularly complex puzzle for 120+ minds to solve. It's simply the Autist is the most visible sign of 'higher' intelligence: most of the time people won't even notice someone is deeply-intelligent unless their language gives them away, in which case someone will mention something about a 'thesaurus', which is why highly-intelligent people learn to measure up their audience and perform to expectations.

I find this assumption particularly hilarious:

Quote:Quote:

Large modern countries are therefore ruled by concentrations of highly intelligent people in the major social systems such as politics, civil administration, law, science and technology, the mass media and education. Communication in these elites is almost-exclusively among the highly intelligent.

All major social systems were subverted by the Illusory Superiority Brigade who make up the bulk of Social Sciences, who converted them from Patriarchal, Merit-Based institutions to Matriarchal, Socialist institutions: as such, they're staffed by incompetent people hired to stroke the ego of some midwit need to feel Self-Righteous.

As such, all of these institutions are failing as they barely-address their purported function and are only successful at advancing Social Justice. Any government agency is populated by some of the dumbest, most incompetent people you will ever meet, all of whom think they're the most intelligent people in the world, yet all they do with their time is bitch on twitter about social justice, and relentlessly-consume lightweight media, movies and television shows to distract themselves from reality.

There's a hospital restructure in my region with a very short timeline to completion: I've heard on the grapevine that 1/3 of the staff 'couldn't cope' - read: actual expectations of results for their job for once - and are off on taxpayer-funded paid stress leave for the remainder of the move, making the job much harder for those who stayed. When the going gets tough: the elite simply avoid the problem, but still expect to be paid.

This is our 'intellectual elite': lazy, incompetent liars.

I don't buy it that there is some inherent pathology from a high IQ. The higher your IQ the better.

I believe that people had higher IQs in the past and the world is actually getting dumber. For example, consider the present debates. I read one analysis that said Trump's language is geared toward a 4th grade level. It is interesting to read debates in the past. Read speeches by Teddy Roosevelt or the Lincoln/Douglas debates. The language had long complicated sentences which expressed subtle arguments. You don't see anything like that today. Most people today wouldn't be able to understand Thomas Paine, who in his day was speaking a common language to the common man. Shakespeare's plays were for ordinary people. Or go back to the Greeks and Romans whose IQ levels must have been off the charts.

The stupidity comes from lack of experience due to growing up sheltered from the harsh realities thanks to a prosperous society. Liberals highly value sensitivity and look down on strength. You can only think like this if someone is protecting you in the background and it never comes to your conscious awareness. In ancient times, the highest IQ people were also consuls, soldiers, and generals. So they had intelligence combined with manly experience that kept them close to reality. Socrates was a highly praised soldier. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. Cicero was a senator. Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great.

Quote: (01-15-2016 04:08 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

Remember, this is an untested hypothesis.

My own untested hypothesis: he's confusing the Autistic type of Intelligence with the Illusory Superiority Intelligence (100-120), that peters out once the capacity for independent learning kicks in at 120 or so.

The social world is not a particularly complex puzzle for 120+ minds to solve. It's simply the Autist is the most visible sign of 'higher' intelligence: most of the time people won't even notice someone is deeply-intelligent unless their language gives them away, in which case someone will mention something about a 'thesaurus', which is why highly-intelligent people learn to measure up their audience and perform to expectations.

I find this assumption particularly hilarious:

Quote:Quote:

Large modern countries are therefore ruled by concentrations of highly intelligent people in the major social systems such as politics, civil administration, law, science and technology, the mass media and education. Communication in these elites is almost-exclusively among the highly intelligent.

All major social systems were subverted by the Illusory Superiority Brigade who make up the bulk of Social Sciences, who converted them from Patriarchal, Merit-Based institutions to Matriarchal, Socialist institutions: as such, they're staffed by incompetent people hired to stroke the ego of some midwit need to feel Self-Righteous.

As such, all of these institutions are failing as they barely-address their purported function and are only successful at advancing Social Justice. Any government agency is populated by some of the dumbest, most incompetent people you will ever meet, all of whom think they're the most intelligent people in the world, yet all they do with their time is bitch on twitter about social justice, and relentlessly-consume lightweight media, movies and television shows to distract themselves from reality.

There's a hospital restructure in my region with a very short timeline to completion: I've heard on the grapevine that 1/3 of the staff 'couldn't cope' - read: actual expectations of results for their job for once - and are off on taxpayer-funded paid stress leave for the remainder of the move, making the job much harder for those who stayed. When the going gets tough: the elite simply avoid the problem, but still expect to be paid.

This is our 'intellectual elite': lazy, incompetent liars.

What about the people in the hard sciences? Their intelligence can't be denied but at the same they seem to have a higher tendency to fall prey to a lot of whacky political and social ideas when compared to the general population. I think the author of the article I posted on the OP has a good solution to this problem: namely their intelligence is domain specific and works well in a Platonic idealized world such as in mathematics or in laboratory conditions but falls apart in the actual real world where we are dealing with flesh and blood people as opposed to say a molecule. Communism is a good example as other people have pointed out. Communism could work in theory if everyone all of a sudden suspended their human natures and decided to behave in the way they are supposed to behave under Marxist theory but of course this will never happen except in the idealized world that only exists in the mind of the creator of the theory.

Well, most of my points have been covered already.

My own observations suggest that your typical leftist clocks in around 110 - 120 IQ. Smart enough to feel superior to the average person (what Bosch is calling Illusory Superiority Intelligence), but not smart enough to actually be smart. I suspect that they are at least subconsciously aware of this, which may be one of the causes of their inferiority described in the Unabomber Manifesto.

MiscBrah and dicknixon72 are correct that a lot of misguided conclusions by IQ 120+ result from being divorced from reality. I don't have much to add to their posts.

People I've met with IQ 150+ (and I haven't met many) are almost always right about whatever they focus their minds on. However, they have a tougher time than most trying to operate in society because their minds just don't work the same way.

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I don't buy it that there is some inherent pathology from a high IQ. The higher your IQ the better.

Depends on what you mean by "better". IQ 180+ with the proper mathematical training and you will make 0.1% income without a sweat. However, 99% of people will think you're weird. There's no free lunch here.

Quote:Quote:

I believe that people had higher IQs in the past and the world is actually getting dumber. For example, consider the present debates. I read one analysis that said Trump's language is geared toward a 4th grade level. It is interesting to read debates in the past. Read speeches by Teddy Roosevelt or the Lincoln/Douglas debates. The language had long complicated sentences which expressed subtle arguments. You don't see anything like that today. Most people today wouldn't be able to understand Thomas Paine, who in his day was speaking a common language to the common man. Shakespeare's plays were for ordinary people. Or go back to the Greeks and Romans whose IQ levels must have been off the charts.

The stupidity comes from lack of experience due to growing up sheltered from the harsh realities thanks to a prosperous society. Liberals highly value sensitivity and look down on strength. You can only think like this if someone is protecting you in the background and it never comes to your conscious awareness. In ancient times, the highest IQ people were also consuls, soldiers, and generals. So they had intelligence combined with manly experience that kept them close to reality. Socrates was a highly praised soldier. Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. Cicero was a senator. Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great.

Assuming IQs are actually decreasing over time, I'm more inclined to think that it's because IQ is heritable (I strongly believe this) and dumber people are both more genetically successful (get laid more) and procreate more.

"Psychological neoteny" - AKA childishness.

Academia leads to a state of extended childhood in students and professors; they are not exposed to normal social competition.
So for the sake of their pride, they denigrate manhood (sometimes expressed as plainly as "The Man.")

Rivalry with the rich if they aren't.
"You may have money, but here's a clever pamphlet about why you should be guillotined."

Rivalry with men with game if they haven't got it.
"You may oppress women with your dick, but here's a pamphlet about why your wife should divorce you if she gets bored."

Then there's the whole Gramsci thing.

Good topic. George Orwell said it best: "Some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals believe in them"

Spend enough time around left-wing circles and you'll see this more times than you can count. I've noticed a few types. First, you have otherwise smart people who become entranced by some fanciful idea or bombastic ideology, oftentimes because such people grow up comfortably but without anything to believe in, so they get sucked into the first "cause" they discover, especially one that plays on disillusionment (an emotion that tends to occur in those who know enough about the world to be disappointed in it, but not enough to know the world is never perfect and can't be). This sort of idealistic inebriation is all over the pages of revolutions throughout history, and ironically enough those unfortunate souls are almost invariably either disappointed or doomed by the results.

Then you have the educated but dim bulbs who like to feel intellectual, so they hide their deficiencies behind the opaque ideological catch-phrases that leftism specializes in. Take any average wit, have him read a few pamphlets by Marx or whoever and soon enough he'll be able to regurgitate enough of the slogans that he'll sound almost like an intelligent person to those who don't know better. These kinds of people fall in love with the appearance that they're smart, and even more the brain-dead approval and sense of superiority they get from their leftist peers. Not surprisingly, they cling to "the cause" with special fervor because their ego depends on it. (Ever wonder why some leftists become so angry and animated in arguments over even the most trivial of topics? That's why...if they don't feel "right", they lose their pretense to feel smart, and thereby most of their self-perception)

Last, you have the people who despite having some intelligence and education still don't quite fit in with most people, and so they seek an outlet for their alienation and disaffection. We see this very frequently among feminists, however the same principle applies generally with many leftists who crave normalcy (far more than you or they'd probably think) but can't find it in normal society...hatred for the normal and normal people is merely a step away from this, and leftist ideology then gives it the veneer of a noble purpose. They tell themselves they're altruistic, but in truth "the cause" is all about them, as it always is.

Luckily, such illusions often fall apart after exposure to the real world. The college leftist who grows up and becomes a conservative is so common that it's become a centuries-old trope.

This is the thing.

I find that my friends who make money are mostly conservative. The business owners, the architects, the engineers, the lawyers (they're a bit more liberal), the real estate developers, etc. We're the ones who can communicate in English without using words that most people don't understand. We express big ideas in simple words.

The academics try and give off the impression that they're smart by using big words that mean nothing. Microaggression. Cultural appropriation. These words and concepts are meaningless.

Liberals look for reasons to justify their failure, now blaming white males and the patriarchy because they're failures. Academia has become a forum for professional victimhood. Yet starting a business like a car wash, coffee shop, or corner market was beneath their intelligence. It's not on par with their great intelligence to do things like wash cars or interact with mere peons.

No, they chose to invest $150k into a degree in gender studies - a topic that isn't even real - and they complain that they can barely afford to pay their rent. It's no wonder they want communism and socialism - so they never have to work for anything. Hell, as a self employed lawyer, often I do my own construction, take out my own trash, and even clean my office space. Because someone has to do these things.

Academia used to be dominated by virtuous men like Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Descartes, Thomas Aquinas, and Augustine of Hippo.

Now academia consists of weaklings, mopers, and left wing losers, who want people to think they're more intelligent than they are. And unlike times past, they're not trying to better society, but rather trying to justify the reasons that they're victims of it.

Quote: (01-15-2016 04:25 PM)Wutang Wrote:  

What about the people in the hard sciences? Their intelligence can't be denied but at the same they seem to have a higher tendency to fall prey to a lot of whacky political and social ideas when compared to the general population.

Most of the Hard Science types I've known have been Red Pill but are discreet about their beliefs because the institutions / publications they need to interact with for their career are controlled by Leftists. Obviously, just my observed experience: reality might differ.

Social Sciences are where the true believers are because the standards for entry are much lower. I've heard them talk for most of my life: in classes, online, in social situations, etc, and I have never once heard and original, interesting or intelligent thought come out of their mouths. It's all Someone Else's Thoughts, or Retardation. Since they're all Idiots, they are deeply-insecure about their intelligence, so posture the loudest about it. These are the twits who think a degree 'proves' someone is intelligent.

I remember a while back noted Fuckwit Wil Wheaton was sneering at gamers because "they probably haven't even attended university". That's the kind of Illusory Superiority I mean. If I had the patience for Twitter, I would have retweeted that remark to every single Working Class Hollywood Union there was.

Bosch mentioned this, you find your Peggy Hills in the social sciences.

Trump has low IQ language because it's the most persuasive. Older Presidents didn't use it because the research wasn't out yet.

Quote: (01-15-2016 11:25 PM)Hades Wrote:  

Bosch mentioned this, you find your Peggy Hills in the social sciences.

Trump has low IQ language because it's the most persuasive. Older Presidents didn't use it because the research wasn't out yet.

I'm an attorney and I communicate in small words. Not because I don't know the big words, but because there are older, simpler, and better words. Those are the ones I use.

I learned that from Hemingway.

Thucydides had something to say about intellectuals roughly two and a half thousand years ago:

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The most alarming feature in the case is the constant change of measures with which we appear to be threatened, and our seeming ignorance of the fact that bad laws which are never changed are better for a city than good ones that have no authority; that unlearned loyalty is more serviceable than quick-witted insubordination; and that ordinary men usually manage public affairs better than their more gifted fellows. The latter are always wanting to appear wiser than the laws, and to overrule every proposition brought forward, thinking that they cannot show their wit in more important matters, and by such behaviour too often ruin their country; while those who mistrust their own cleverness are content to be less learned than the laws, and less able to pick holes in the speech of a good speaker; and being fair judges rather than rival athletes, generally conduct affairs successfully. These we ought to imitate, instead of being led on by cleverness and intellectual rivalry to advise your people against our real opinions.

This is from Cleon's speech to the Athenians over the Mytilene Debate in his History of the Peloppenisan War. Whether he was biased in favour of Cleon or whether Cleon actually said it are largely irrelevant - it's that the insight is made at all. As Cleon (or, probably Thucydides himself) points out, it's always people who think they're smarter than they are who are determined to fuck around with laws without realising that laws generally are in place for good reason and have evolved over a period of time to that state. But note the reason for it: because they can't show their wit in more important matters. The progressive impulse arises out of a feeling of inferiority and insecurity.

EDIT: Fucking image was too big. Anyway...

The other quote that I find apposite is a longish one from Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park -- and Crichton certainly had a wether eye on the subject of gender "discrimination":

Quote:Quote:

Ellie said, "You don't think much of Arnold, do you?"
"He's all right. He's an engineer. Wu's the same. They're both technicians. They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences. That's how you get an island like this. From thintelligent thinking. Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don't see that."
"Don't you think it's just human nature?" Ellie said.
"God, no," Malcolm said. "That's like saying scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast is human nature. It's nothing of the sort. It's uniquely Western training, and much of the rest of the world is nauseated by the thought of it." He winced in pain. "The morphine's making me philosophical."
"You want some water?"
"No. I'll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists. Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature. Which is true, but that's not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.'
"Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators sear the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts
leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.
"The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just
appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific." He sighed, and sank back.
Ellie said, "Don't you think you're overstating-"
"What does one of your excavations look like a year later?"
"Pretty had," she admitted.
"You don't replant, you don't restore the land after you dig?"
"No."
"Why not?"
She shrugged. "There's no money, I guess. . . ."
"There's only enough money to dig, but not to repair?"
"Well, we're just working in the badlands. . . ."
"Just the badlands," Malcolm said, shaking his head. "Just trash. Just byproducts. Just side effects . . . I'm trying to tell you that scientists want it this way. They want byproducts and trash and scars and side effects. It's a way of reassuring themselves. It's built into the fabric of science,
and it's increasingly a disaster."
"Then what's the answer?"
"Get rid of the thintelligent ones. Take them out of power."
"But then we'd lose all the advances-"
"What advances?" Malcolm said irritably. "The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics . . . Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?"

These insights apply equally to intellectuals and progressives. They don't see the surround or the consequences -- what we call the 'real world' which is where their nutball ideas have to operate. Social science's main problem is that it's convinced itself to behave like, and as if it was, an actual science when in reality it's basically somewhere between (at best) religion, English literature, primitive economics, and palm-reading. And in academia, whether in STEM or social science, you publish or perish. It's no better than clickbaiting: you have to keep publishing, so you keep asserting the same problems are still around, and keep getting your papers going as a result. You have a vested interest in there being a problem, so you keep saying that there is a problem.

And again it's thintelligence in action: no surround, no consequences. And for all the trees social science and feminism has brought down, all the supposed 'progress' women have made, why do they still attempt suicide at four times the rate of men, and why are one quarter of them diagnosed with mental illnesses? Why are women going barren more than any time in human history? Why are they murdering children in utero at rates fifteen, twenty times than they were before the birth control pill was introduced and which was supposed to put a stop to all this?

Quote: (01-15-2016 01:08 PM)Wutang Wrote:  

So next time you see some super educated autistic honor student suggest the world would be better off if everyone gave up guns, if we let unlimited third world immigrants within first world nations, and everyone gave up jealousy and greed and such - you'll know the reason for why they think the way they do. It's because they operate in the realm of theory...

To play devils advocate- this has very little to do with being high IQ/autistic and more to do with being wrong. The truly autistic solution, with all of the facts(as far as I know), would be to suggest the world is better off if everyone had cheap guns, people defended themselves against the primitives, and only used greed(and to a lesser extent jealousy/envy) in a productive way.

The "right" theory suggests the truly autistic solutions while the "wrong" theory suggests the bad ones. It's nothing(or very little) to do with them being high IQ or autistic or too theoretical- it's everything to do with them being wrong.

I met a progressive last night who reflected many of the talking points we hash over here.

He wanted a utopian society and couldn't understand why everyone else wasn't on board with creating it. He didn't realise the majority of the world's population has an IQ<100 and its consequent effects on tribalism vs openness. Growing up in Canada he had never experienced want and was insulated from the raw desire and self-interest that it generates.

He was a good guy who genuinely meant well, but he was steeped in the 'you are a good person if you are progessive' mindset. I can't bag him out too much because that's exactly how I was in my early 20's growing up in Australia. There wasn't enough opposing viewpoints to be exposed to and with all the garbage going on in my life at the time I couldn't develop one independently.

But one area where he and I differed was that he didn't have a strong grasp of consequences. He hadn't thought through where his ideas would lead when taking into account basic human behaviour.

I think that many progressives are like this. They think they're fighting the good fight, but they're idealists who have no idea how the real world and most people operate. They think 'this is how it SHOULD be' rather than 'this is how things are'.

The truth is a lot simpler: they're just arrogant dipshits.

- They want to put themselves in a position where they are always right (regardless of the truth), so they wall themselves off in academia instead of ever venturing out into the real world, where they would have their fantasy ideas unpleasantly stripped away by the cold hard realities of real life.
- They are magically right about everything because they used to get good exam results in unrelated topics so they have been validated as "intelligent" according to their own black and white idea of what that is.
- They want to be in a position where they 'teach' others their ideas, and those people are rewarded or punished based on if they 'correctly' parrot those ideas
- They want a closed shop of ideas and opinion, to match their unjustifiably inflated intellectual egos. Leftism fits this fine -- we are the enlightened 'in club', and you're all wrong if you don't comply with our ideas.

There are many PhD academics who can't function in the private sector.

I studied under some smart geologists with robust research papers, but these types never went into the oil industry cause they couldn't handle the pressure, or understand the big-picture strategy that their work could be made obsolete by a strong price swing in oil.
Or even the basics of capital planning.

Democrats always use this argument that they are higher educated so therefore their ideas are right. It never crosses their mind that the government is funding a self-fulfilling circle jerk of pointless 'academic' bullshit. That sitting in a classroom 4 years longer makes you a smarter person.
Professors all vote left because they know they're fucked without government giving them the spigot of student loans to pad their 120k salary.

It's far, far more difficult to start a business and break even than it is to regurgitate information on a test. Academics can't handle the real world.

Quote: (01-16-2016 01:03 AM)Speculation Wrote:  

I met a progressive last night who reflected many of the talking points we hash over here.

He wanted a utopian society and couldn't understand why everyone else wasn't on board with creating it. He didn't realise the majority of the world's population has an IQ<100 and its consequent effects on tribalism vs openness. Growing up in Canada he had never experienced want and was insulated from the raw desire and self-interest that it generates.

He was a good guy who genuinely meant well, but he was steeped in the 'you are a good person if you are progessive' mindset. I can't bag him out too much because that's exactly how I was in my early 20's growing up in Australia. There wasn't enough opposing viewpoints to be exposed to and with all the garbage going on in my life at the time I couldn't develop one independently.

I think the situation in Europe and especially Germany and Sweden with regards to the migrant crisis is a good example of this.

Germans and Swedes despite being intelligent and being able to create and run the highly successful societies they inhabit are currently "losing" to migrants who are coming from failing societies. No matter how many rapes or robberies happen these Europeans seem to think if the migrants are coddled and nurtured enough then they'll suddenly turn into good citizens. After all, it works for their own native citizens and because we're all the same it should work for everyone else right? Another example of being blinded theory and ideology and ignoring the realities of flesh and blood people.

Quote: (01-16-2016 01:10 AM)Disco_Volante Wrote:  

There are many PhD academics who can't function in the private sector.

I studied under some smart geologists with robust research papers, but these types never went into the oil industry cause they couldn't handle the pressure, or understand the big-picture strategy that their work could be made obsolete by a strong price swing in oil.
Or even the basics of capital planning.

Democrats always use this argument that they are higher educated so therefore their ideas are right. It never crosses their mind that the government is funding a self-fulfilling circle jerk of pointless 'academic' bullshit. That sitting in a classroom 4 years longer makes you a smarter person.
Professors all vote left because they know they're fucked without government giving them the spigot of student loans to pad their 120k salary.

It's far, far more difficult to start a business and break even than it is to regurgitate information on a test. Academics can't handle the real world.

Likewise. I once saw an academic lawyer - professor no less - a guy who taught Family Law classes - up against an experienced courtroom advocate in an actual court case. The advocate wiped the floor with the academic, even if the academic had a decade or more of age on him.