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I saw someone on reddit link this greentext image which explains some of the difficulties with basic reasoning ability that people with low IQ have.
I've read some books on the basics of intelligence research (which shows that intelligence is positively correlated with many outcomes that are good, and negatively correlated with many outcomes that are bad), but this text somehow phrased it in very concrete terms that I found interesting. Are there any other readings people have found that tries to contextualize the reality of living at a different intelligence level?
I know that, when people empathize with others, they tend to do so by "putting themselves in other people's shoes", which is trying to figure out how you would act given a different set of circumstances. But doing this with people of vastly different cognitive ability than you is flawed, and I want to understand some of the ways in which it is flawed better.
This post was discussed on the old subreddit. I was skeptical then and I am skeptical now. "Dumb" people (IQ less than 90) have trouble with abstract reasoning and complex cognitive problems, but "Imagine if you didn't eat yesterday, how would you have felt?" is not beyond their ability to imagine. It's almost like the greentext is trying to argue that low-IQ people can't parse a past perfect conditional grammatical construct rather than "They can't grasp hypotheticals."
Or, more likely, the person writing this is the kind of graduate student that would write this shit, and feels nothing but obvious contempt for his interlocutors in prison orange, who then have no interest in playing along with his little games. The dialogue reads more to me like a dude being uncooperative than retarded. Like when I, as an annoying brat 11 year old, would try to get my schoolmates to play intellectual word games and they'd reply to every question with "cheese." Just to piss me off, which was easier than it should have been.
As though I went to San Quentin, organized a basketball game which none of the inmates were very interested in at all, and ran to 4chan to excitedly announce: did you know most convicts are actually very unathletic? Practically crippled! Just let me dribble right by them and make lay ups all day! They barely played defense, and when they got the ball they would almost always turn it over to me and then go back to barely playing D.
This is really one of those things that makes me wonder a bit about the concept of IQ. Like, IQ tests undoubtedly to some degree measure intelligence, but also some degree the willingness to cooperate, do what you're asked to do, be social (ie. obey the purpose of the test) etc.; both of these then probably have something to do with one's ability to do well in modern working world, stay out of trouble with law etc. but are still similar concepts.
This realization came to me when talking about "dog intelligence", a concept - it seems to me - to at least in your normal vulgar parlance be mostly related to how well the dogs obey humans when humans order them to do things.
Re dogs: I'm actually going to disagree about the dogs, because have you ever met a smart breed of dog that belonged to an owner that didn't train it or stimulate it enough? They turn into nightmare criminals. A friend of a friend has this border collie that she never trained right, it'll do things like chew on a doorknob to get into the house from the garage, then methodically poop in every room in the house. Like a determined goal oriented criminal.
Maybe this metaphor is going in a different direction 😂
I have to admit I've never owned a dog myself, I'm just going by how people generally seem to talk about dog intelligence.
I think you’re right, most of the dog intelligence lists you’ll find are based off of trainability and willingness to cooperate with humans. Which makes sense, since that’s the main reason someone would want to know how smart a dog breed is. For instance, Beagles are usually ranked near the bottom of intelligence lists. I have a beagle: she is very clever, but stubborn as a mule and extremely focused on food. Training her was difficult because unless you had food, she usually wouldn’t cooperate. Once you were holding food, she’d “remember” how to roll over, sit, whatever. Stupid? Not at all. Independent and focused on “what’s in it for me?” Very much so.
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