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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Most smart people lose half of their income to taxes and make half of what they should because of anti smart people systematic efforts to lower their opportunities. In other words, most smart people are upper middle class and make six figures. Or less -- go check the IQ income correlation. 145 IQ people are on average at the 90th percentile of income, with a lot of spread. That sounds wrong to me.

The most robust IQ-income correlations I've seen stop at 130, because they're based on the ASVAB.

This gets close to 140. The trend is pretty obvious anyway. My statement was based on the correlation being about 0.40. That means 3 SD IQ people average 1.2 SD income which is around 90th percentile on a gaussian. Income is skewed of course but not as fat tailed as wealth so I think this is a reasonable estimate. A right tail should decrease the percentile of each SD so if anything the situation is more bleak.

He's just using a different normalization of the same scores, that apparently gives slightly higher equivalent IQs.

So? You can see the linear trend, and the real underlying IQs in the sample were near 140, not max 130.

OK, so we take the median income at 145 to follow the linear trend at $50,850 (2011) above the expected value at 100, which is $32,730 (2011). This seems pretty good. Note that personal income doesn't follow a gaussian distribution at all.

It should probably be 10x the amount.

Whatever you call "let the high IQs work without taxes or competition with anyone they don't like", it's not "aristocracy" in any established meaning of the word. Aristocracy is not when you "get" to do things. Aristocracy is when you do things, while other people less versed in politics "get" to do what you allow them and no more.

Bemoaning that the world isn't fair because you only get to keep 100k/year instead of 200k/year is a useless and undignified activity.

Amazing how much "dignity" coincides with shutting up and accepting what your betters give you.

One's welcome to not accept it, and I wish him luck in getting more than what he's given. I just don't care for made-up justifications for why he "deserves" more than mere dregs of an upper middle class salary.

I just don't care for made-up justifications for why he "deserves" more than mere dregs of an upper middle class salary.

Why are you so bent out of shape about this? You don't always think so materially or amorally. For example, you said

I think that's silly. Universities should teach material, not create rat races. If too many of your students pass the material, teach harder material.

Here's how you-in-this-thread would reply to this:

Buddy, I've got some bad news for you. universities do create rat races. You're just mad you lost! I wish you luck in squeezing a little more out of the rat race some day, but it will take a lot of sweat, sacrifice, and hard work. And remember: you deserve nothing.

My oughts about higher education institutions are different than my oughts about the base structure of society. If you looked for my opinion on something that's even lower stakes, such as competitive gaming, you'd find that it doesn't align with my views on an ideal society either.

Yes but you acted like you don't understand the concept of ought in this thread. Apparently you do, and you turned it off when convenient.

I disagree with yours.

One could say that I observe a stable moral-aesthetic superposition between "the world should be fair!" and "the world is unfair, act like it". "The world should be unfair in my favor" is not a part of the superposition.

Sounds like equality is your only morality. You are struggling to conceive of morality outside of equality, the only other thing you can see is amorality.

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it's not "aristocracy" in any established meaning of the word

Polybius's "anacyclosis" idea (Wikipedia article short on citations, original text)

Monarchy (good) → tyranny (bad) → aristocracy (good) → oligarchy (bad) → democracy (good) → ochlocracy (bad) → monarchy

let the high IQs work without taxes or competition with anyone they don't like

I didn't say without competition. I said without meaningless competition. It's like banning France from the worldcup unless they play 3 games a day against U14 teams to qualify. Obviously in a lot of worlds France will just sit it out and the world cup will be won by some mediocre team that was willing to play all year against U14s.

Aristocracy is not when you "get" to do things.

Aristocracy is a privilege, nature is when animals just do things, like a bear eating a human for example. Aristocracy is like being born into a world where you don't have to waste your time fending off bears.

Bemoaning that the world isn't fair because you only get to keep 100k/year instead of 200k/year is a useless and undignified activity.

It's less undignified than having or expressing false consciousness and it's not more useless than anything else people comment on the internet for free.

I didn't say without competition. I said without meaningless competition.

I didn't say without competition either. I said without competition with anyone you don't like. Naturally everyone is incentivized to eliminate as much competition as possible, branding it "meaningless" and "below them" and shit. That isn't how it works. Competition only becomes truly meaningless when you're strong enough to make your lessers compete against it instead. Like the actual aristocrats of the world are currently doing to you. You're the bear barrier. You'll remain one until you become the kind of person who's better at wrangling people than bears.

If you're truly too smart for your current position in the world then complaining on wordcel forums is both undignified and useless. You should be out there lobbying, colluding and scheming.

I said without competition with anyone you don't like.

I didn't say that either, I don't like all smart people. I like some non-smart people. But the point remains that a lot of my and your life has been spent in intellectual competition with people obviously less intelligent. This mainly is expressed through credentialism and dumb hiring practices. It's also expressed in lack of intelligence segregation. The consequence of having no segregation is a performative zero sum competition to separate yourself from someone you do not mix with. The reason you don't need to spend half your life demonstrating why you shouldn't be a farm animal or a wild animal is species segregation. Top 10% people are not segregated enough from the bottom half of humans even though they're as easy to tell apart as man and goat.

If you're truly too smart for your current position in the world then complaining on wordcel forums is both undignified and useless. You should be out there lobbying, colluding and scheming.

Stop criticizing how I spend my leisure time, it's rude and disrupts how I want to spend my leisure time. Do you never do anything for fun? The idea I have to spend all my time competing against Chinese rice peasants and white proletariat is what I'm against. Aristocrats philosophize. Maybe be happier that you're here also partaking in aristocratic leisure?

Like the actual aristocrats of the world are currently doing to you.

The aristocrats aren't doing anything to me. Literally, socialism is a bigger problem than billionaires by a magnitude of 10,000 times at least. Socialism takes all my money. I don't like the billionaires because they are not aristocrats, they are mostly lucky peasants or class traitors and that's that but they're basically not worth worrying about.

But the point remains that a lot of my and your life has been spent in intellectual competition with people obviously less intelligent.

This is certainly not my experience. I have not found it difficult to live an intelligence-segregated life, apart from inevitable but brief interactions with the DMV and other similar organizations, simply by dint of pursuing my academic and career interests. There were dumb kids and affirmative action admits in college, but I was under no obligation to befriend them, and their mere presence in some introductory or mandatory course hardly counted as competition. Wherever these hordes of unwashed midwit Indian H-1B's everyone complains about are (some windowless warehouse in Silicon Valley, I am led to believe), it isn't anywhere near me. I knew of academic labs where everyone was from the same country as the professor, but it was obvious that they were to be avoided, and there was no shortage of other research opportunities. Hell, I can have the same sort of conversations I do here in-person if I go to enough rationalist meetups and suss out the crimethinkers.

Sure, same here, but it would be less costly to achieve and of higher quality if it were a legal right, don't you agree?

The aristocrats aren't doing anything to me. Literally, socialism is a bigger problem than billionaires by a magnitude of 10,000 times at least. Socialism takes all my money. I don't like the billionaires because they are not aristocrats, they are mostly lucky peasants or class traitors and that's that but they're basically not worth worrying about.

I am not talking about the billionaires. The billionaires are the equivalent of the rich who the aristocrats of old borrowed money from.

"I've paid you a small fortune."
"And that gives you power over me?"

Do you feel in charge? If you're the top 10%, why do you not feel in charge? What are you doing about it?

Stop criticizing how I spend my leisure time, it's rude and disrupts how I want to spend my leisure time. Do you never do anything for fun? The idea I have to spend all my time competing against Chinese rice peasants and white proletariat is what I'm against. Aristocrats philosophize. Maybe be happier that you're here also partaking in aristocratic leisure?

I'm criticizing your leisure time because you're the one here who's unhappy about not being handed things like convenient and enriching competition. I work for 1/3 of the money someone in my IQ cohort could and apply 1/10 the effort. I feel quite alright with the ratio of money to effort I'm getting, and spend the rest of my time engaging in laborer leisure. Meanwhile, you're larping at "aristocratic leisure" while very evidently not being an aristocrat. (You could tell if you were because you'd feel in charge.)

The reason you don't need to spend half your life demonstrating why you shouldn't be a farm animal is species segregation.

The reason I don't have to demonstrate that is that farm animals are much better at dragging plows and being tasty than me (and tractors beat them at the former, too). If you lived in the era where draft animals were scarce you'd have to prove why you'd be more useful in the office doing shape rotating/wordcelry than dragging a plow. We don't have species segregation, we just made animal labor cheaper than ours.

Meanwhile, you're larping at "aristocratic leisure" while very evidently not being an aristocrat. (You could tell if you were because you'd feel in charge.)

Aristocrat is a phenotype, aristocracy is rule by that phenotype. I am an aristocrat, but there is no aristocracy. This whole exchange, you have struggled with distinguishing descriptive and normative statements, redefining my normative statements as different descriptive statements and then claiming that those descriptions are not true. For example, I say I want an aristocracy. You then define an aristocrat as any person that gets some social authority, and remark that you don't think I have any. Then you say I'm not an aristocrat. That is not a productive way to have this conversation.

The reason I don't have to demonstrate that is that farm animals are much better at dragging plows and being tasty than me (and tractors beat them at the former, too).

We don't know that they are more tasty, because species segregation has banned any investigation into this question. You have that privilege. Now imagine if you had to fight tooth and nail not having the privilege, and if there were no species segregation police force you didn't invent, organize, or sufficiently fund that was willing to enforce your species privilege. Your existence would be much more precarious in such a world.

We don't know that they are more tasty, because species segregation has banned any investigation into this question. You have that privilege. Now imagine if you had to fight tooth and nail not having the privilege, and if there were no species segregation police force you didn't invent, organize, or sufficiently fund that was willing to enforce your species privilege. Your existence would be much more precarious in such a world.

We have some reports of the taste. And we do know from evidence that it is not enticing enough to even fund a decently-sized black market. Criminals widely trade in weapons, drugs, sex, slaves, children, sex slaves, child slaves and sex with children, yet human meat remains an afterthought for the very few depraved.

Even if I lived next to a cannibal barbarian tribe without any protection, my existence would not be substantially more precarious than living next to a non-cannibal barbarian tribe.

This whole exchange, you have struggled with distinguishing descriptive and normative statements, redefining my normative statements as different descriptive statements and then claiming that those descriptions are not true. For example, I say I want an aristocracy. You then define an aristocrat as any person that gets some social authority, and remark that you don't think I have any. Then you say I'm not an aristocrat.

There is no objective definition of aristocracy or aristocrats. When I deny you being an aristocrat because you do not rule, this is me being charitable, conceding the implication that if you were higher on the totem pole, I would not question your status as an aristocrat.

Less charitably:

  • You are not to my knowledge a descendant of any hereditary privileged ruling class
  • neither appointed as such
  • neither evidently possessing any virtues commonly associated with aristocrats at a high level, other than intellect (taking your claims of high IQ at face value)

For all I can see your self-designation of an aristocrat is mostly according to a definition you have custom-made to fit yourself but not the people who you are bitter about losing status to.

This is indeed not a productive discussion. There have been other posters who combined high opinion of their own virtues with low tangible evidence of such. This is not a good combination. You want someone to care about your high IQ without asking for what you have accomplished with it, join MENSA. I heard it's a dull community precisely because it attracts the people who have the measure of intelligence but not the virtue of it, but perhaps you'll find it different.

This is not a good combination. You want someone to care about your high IQ without asking for what you have accomplished with it, join MENSA. I heard it's a dull community precisely because it attracts the people who have the measure of intelligence but not the virtue of it, but perhaps you'll find it different.

Do you feel threatened or something? Don't you want to be in the club with me? I want more than a club for people who studied for a boring IQ test, I want a Faustian world where high frequency people rule over the demos. I want a world of justice and beauty. A world of genius and action.

Instead, we have the opposite. A world where the proletariat rule over the genius. A world that defines justice as proles getting what they want all the time. A world of obese tattoo blobs having equal rights. A world of stupidity and torpidity.

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