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The primary criterion for mental retardation was an IQ below 70. The secondary criteria were difficulty in two areas of cognitive function impacting everyday live, such as problem solving or academic achievement; I understand that there were rare individuals who avoid diagnosis on this basis, but by and large they were coextensive. The DSM V changed the name to 'intellectual disability' and discarded the IQ requirement, which changed little because the areas of impairment largely capture the same signal.
Intellectual disability isn't actually some special, separate category from regular low intelligence, it's simply the (somewhat arbitrary) cutoff below which low intelligence is considered a disability. When someone uses 'retarded' in this context to mean 'stupid,' that's... just what the word means. No one's confused here. When a psychologist or a teen boy calls someone 'retarded,' they are making very nearly exactly the same claim of fact; the latter is saying 'you're very dumb,' and the former is saying 'you're very dumb (and that's not a bad thing!).' But even then, that's just professional courtesy; the psychologist does call people stupid in a pejorative manner outside of work because they, like everyone else, place value on intelligence.
Yes, exactly this. If you believe it's an insult to call someone stupid, then the treadmill will only ever generate new insults. If you want to de-stigmatize stupidity, then... good luck with that, I guess. Maybe it'll actually be possible once we all know ourselves to be 'intellectually disabled' in comparison to the AI god?
Wasn't that the argument of The Cult of Smart?
Come to think of it, that's also an argument Lewis satirises in Screwtape Proposes a Toast, isn't it? Norwood's idea of 'parity of esteem' is a kind of move to de-stigmatise stupidity, or at least, de-stigmatise low academic achievement. Lewis' response is, "Intelligence is good, and academic success is good, and there is no sense pretending otherwise. They are not the only goods, and dumb people may be virtuous in other ways, which should be encouraged and praised, but they are nonetheless good in themselves."
Sure, there have been a few arguments in that direction. It's just very far outside the Overton Window, and likely for good reason. I'd characterize intelligence as merit rather than virtue per se -- and certainly, unintelligent people can be virtuous and even meritorious in other ways -- but merit is often more important than virtue. Society does a reasonably good job aligning individual and collective incentives, after all, so self-interested competence produces a lot more social value than altruistically-inclined incompetence.
We treat virtue as more important, but that's because merit finds its own reward. Amazon has improved the lives of many, many people, but there's no reason to praise Jeff Bezos for that; he's already been fairly compensated by the market. The status afforded to the virtuous is an attempt at ad-hoc redress, incentivizing socially valuable behavior the market can't (or isn't, for whatever reason,) capturing.
Still, it's important to understand where value truly comes from, or we might kill the goose that lays these golden eggs. Intelligence is good in itself.
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