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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31680 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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My favorite fake fact is that people with <100 IQ can't understand hypotheticals. I've worked minimum wage jobs and I've met some real fucking dummies - yes, they can understand hypotheticals

You are most likely right about this being a myth about low-IQ people, but I have personally verified, on more than one occasion, that people who don't understand hypotheticals exist.

I'll buy that people below a certain IQ threshold can't understand hypotheticals, but this IQ threshold is obviously to me far below 90. I think I have a pretty good understanding of what 85 IQ people are like and they can grasp that they would be hungry if they didn't eat breakfast. They are not very good at following logic, learning foreign languages, planning ahead, or doing math, but they can understand hypotheticals at a basic level.

To add onto this, while I don’t actually know much about the research in the area, I don’t find it actually that difficult to believe (that some very select, very stupid people can’t understand hypotheticals). All children at some point of growth don’t, just as all children at some point don’t have anything resembling a theory of mind. You just need some people who never quite get beyond that as they age (or spend way too much time getting there).

To be fair, I don't think it's stupidity, if anything it might indicate intelligence. My guess at the mechanism is people intuitively recognizing where the argument leads, and throwing a wrench into the conversation so you don't get to make it.

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