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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Interesting topic in a thread below

Consider: a society of just downies and Henrys* wouldn't even be a society, while a society of Enron, Google, and AXA is just ... our society.

A society of my aunt and Henrys would necessarily devolve into hunter gatherers who would be in a precarious position.

A rival hunter gatherer society of entirely Enron, Google and AXA professionals would be a tribe that my retarded aunt and Henry with comparable numbers of similar nature would probably subjugate easily, eventually integrating violent strong men or wise old women, humiliating the rest in servitude.

I think this is probably a point of disagreement for many here and so worth discussing on its own. I see two larger topics that this could become a test for: One is the model of "general competence"/IQ maximalism, expecting successful people to be successful at ~everything, vs a tradeoff between abstract thinking and practical or social skills. Second, whether our current elites are in some sense a paper tiger - bullshit jobs, Overcredentialism, etc.

*"I had a patient, let’s call him ‘Henry’ for reasons that are to become clear, who came to hospital after being picked up for police for beating up his fifth wife."

There exists no such tradeoff. IQ is correlated to just everything good if you are willing to proxy a few things.

Also, the situation matters here very much so. Currently, our current elites are paper tigers in terms of numbers. They would also be paper tigers if dropped on a deserted island and forced to fight to the death an equal number of the not-elites at that very instant. Things might change if you give both groups 1 week to prepare. Things will change if you give each group a year to prepare.

Yep. Let's not forget that our best theories are that intelligence evolved to help humans navigate social relationships. The low IQ group is going to collapse in on itself the moment some medium degree hardship comes along which pits group members against each other, simply because low IQ people are less adpet at forging and maintaining complicated relationships and at giving up a small reward now for a larger expected reward later.

The CEO/Execs group doesn't even have to do much to win, they literally just need to wait for the other group to implode.

This isn't really what we are looking for in a top level post.

Problems:

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  2. The content of your post amounts to "here is a thing, lets discuss". At a minimum it is helpful to at least give your view on the topic. Extra good if you include other viewpoints and how you disagree with them.

Seems like Im a bit rusty. Better now?

Yes, better

Not sure if I’m following that comment’s train of thought. History has proven time and again that organized armies are superior to disorganized but strong foes. The Romans were able to beat the stronger, taller Germans mostly because they had better organization. The Google employees have passed through numerous filters for conscientiousness, intelligence, health (a necessary precondition for good work), industriousness, and cooperative ability. In a “state of nature” they would be creating spears and bows and Henry would be their slave on week 2. They would be spending 8 hours a day on specialized labor, trusting the labor of their neighbor, according to a hierarchical common plan. Henry would be singing old Henry Rollins songs to himself and failing to ferment fruit into alcohol.

Yep, doesn't matter if Henry is 4x as phisically strong. The Googlers just have to form ambush parties of 6 men each, wait for Henry to idiotically stray a bit too far from his group then spring upon him while 4 of them hold down his limbs and the other two crush his underdeveloped skull with a large rock. Repeat until the enemy tribe is no more.

In a state of nature, Henry would be killed as useless (or after getting caught with the chief's wife or daughter), the Google employees would be the slaves creating spears and bows, and the same people on top now would be the chiefs.

Or been killed directly by an angry father or older brother- lots of premodern law codes considered unlawful seduction to be a crime which entitled the male relatives of the woman to the use of lethal force.

If violence is not solving your problems, you are not using enough of it. We the techies live in incredible layers of abstractions enabled by the state, economy and the cities. Majority of us will be helpless without internet, even more helpless without electricity. Few of us have the knowledge, tools and resources to black start a society. Even if we pool it.

For a person to use leverage his brawn needs not much, for brains we need insane infrastructure.

Are tech nerds actually worse off on brawn and know-how than other urban denizens, on average? My experience is that techies have quite a few hobbyists in various physical, martial, or practical skills. Within the few dozen people I was close to at my old tech job, I can think of at least a few that are heavily armed, some hunters, some gardeners, a woodworker, some marathoners, a bodybuilder, a jiu jitsu guy, a blacksmith, and various other hobbies that seem esoteric, but would be useful in reset environment. I'm sure that the typical rural, blue-collar guy has a greater array of practical skills, but I actually doubt that the typical lower SES urban resident is as interested in these sorts of things.

I have observed the same as well. People with high IQs fall into one of three categories: being really good at strength, really good at cardio, or neither (usually being fat, overweight). People with average IQs tend to almost always be in the neither category, especially by 30.

Are tech nerds actually worse off on brawn and know-how than other urban denizens, on average?

As a tech bro, I'll say that my coworkers are reasonably fit. They are not typically fat. They typically have physical hobbies. Compared to median Americans they're doing well.

The urban working class typically has a very high degree of automotive skills that the UMC lacks, but widespread skills in things like plumbing and carpentry are more of a rural thing. There’s a straightforward class explanation for this- the urban working class drives old, shitty cars that need to be worked on a lot, and so learning to do things themselves saves them a lot of money(and being able to handle your wife’s/girlfriend’s auto problems is a mark of status and sometimes expected), which is often a scarce resource. By contrast their housing is usually rented until they’re old enough to not want to learn new skills.

Meanwhile the UMC not only can afford a mechanic more easily, they can also afford cars that don’t break down so often.

so learning to do things themselves saves them a lot of money

No joke, I saved $700 last year by replacing brake pads in my car myself, as three different shop in my west coast city quoted $900+. Took me 2-3 hours because I was doing it for the first time, will likely take less than 1 hour next time, and I won’t have to rebuy the tools I bought for this, so I’ll save even more.

And ‘ability to borrow tools’ is a key benefit of working class social networks, so the urban working class would save even more.

Discount auto parts stores will loan tools to any customer free or for a nominal charge. They don't check the color of your cooler either.

They don't check the color of your cooler either.

? can you explain this one? I am really confused here.

It was supposed to be collar but I misspelled it. They're happy to loan tools to white collar or blue collar customers.

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Lower SES residents can’t even shoot straight - what makes people think they would be good at any sort of organized violence?

The fact that the criminal organizations controlling large portions of entire countries south of the border are often the same ones the American underclass joins in droves, most likely.

The people running cartels aren’t dumb…?

Even the high level enforcers for cartels are former spec-ops soldiers.

The gay techie I used as an example earlier looks like this. (warning: rest of his mastodon profile is nsfw + gay). Not that big, but i'd definitely pick him over randomly-selected-red-triber in the survial-teleportation-hypothetical. My experience more generally is the same - quite a few hobbyists, although most aren't particularly fit or experienced with that stuff.

I’d buy that, but he’s not exactly randomly selected either.

Yeah, I think if you rounded up all the LGBTQ techies, many, many more of them would look like Contrapoints than this guy. (not that the not-gay ones would be much different, apart from the makeup and loungewear)

Only, outside of a few techies, intelligence seems to broadly correlate with every other positive trait, including brawns.

Is that actually true? Professional athletes don’t seem like a notably bright group.

I’ll grant you that most positive traits have some level of correlation together, but I don’t think brawn in the sense of pure physical strength and speed is particularly tightly correlated to intelligence in the same way as height.

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