Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Watching college football yesterday a friend was texting me about one of the better players being super quick. So the question I posed was would you trade your intelligence for getting to run like that? I have never wanted to be a pro sports player after I reached the age of like 7, but I do watch highlights of athletes getting to jump or basically fly and it looks like it would be a lot of fun. Most people here I assume do not have this skillset. To my question my friend replied depends how much money he gets.
So my question is would you trade your intelligence for getting to have that athletic ability. Basically you can do anything you want on a football field but the entire world outside the football field is complete confusion to you. I would say Antonio Brown is the leading brand of having no understanding of anything off the football field.
The reverse of AB I think would be someone like Leopold Aschenbrenner. Very high IQ. Like AB most of human society is something he does not get to be a part of. My gut says like 98% of humans would find him annoying but he’s fine when he stays in EA/AI type places. I am closer to this spectrum.
I’ve also been thinking of kinds of intelligence that I lack. I literally can not clean. And it’s not just laziness. My mind is just very bad at organizing things and I’m very messy. I feel like this is kind of common with people who are good at math. I remember in college math professors had the messiest offices. I noticed this when my cleaning ladies show up. My place can be a complete mess and in 2.5 hours the place is perfect after they arrive. To me this is absolute magic.
Thinking about different types of intelligence I feel it makes me more empathetic. I know I have some abilities that are absolute magic to other people. I know I have some weaknesses that no matter how hard I work I can’t do the tasks.
My answer to my original question is I would not give up intelligence for being a marvelous athlete. Getting to read Plato or the US Constitution and understand their arguments and reasoning is not something I would give up. But I would pay a lot of money to get to be a marvelous athlete for 1-day just to experience dunking over someone or being the best player in a college football game.
As for QOL being someone like Cam Heyward (I’m a Steelers fan) who seems like a functional human being is likely the highest QOL. He’s possibly too dumb to understand an index fund but smart enough to not get robbed by advisors and just pay a 1% tax to Goldman Sachs. Being someone like AB probably sucks because I am fairly certain everything off the field is magic to him.
If you read my rant I appreciate it.
For the most part, the conjecture of multiple intelligences is just egalitarian hopium, especially when it comes to carrying water for non-Asian minorities (e.g., blacks—and to a lesser extent—latinos). See, for instance: Other Ways of Knowing.
Assuming there are no aesthetic implications, I’d happily sacrifice 1/3 st. dev. of athleticism for +5 IQ points.
I played a lot of sports when I was a teenager and was quite good at them, which got me a lot of free female attention. However, as an adult it doesn’t do me too much good, aside from the very occasional sport-related work outing where I can do some aura farming.
Even with 1/3 st. dev. or more (within reason) of loss in athletic ability I could still easily ragdoll a chick if she initiates playfighting, so no concerns there in the domain that really matters.
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If you're stupid but you don't know you're stupid, it's not your problem. It's everyone else's.
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I remember a friend once made a reasonable argument that if he had his choice he we would be 'really rich and really stupid'. He had a caveat that his money would be managed by someone else. Then he would spend his money on stupid and simple things that made him happy.
I remember some rednecks in a youtube once that were rich 'from the lottery?' and they built a monster truck track on their property and just threw parties and did stupid stuff all the time.
Edit: I should say he explained that a lot of it was chasing happiness and he figured the easiest way to do it was through an 'ignorance is bliss' approach to the world. He wouldn't know what he was missing out on and he wouldn't have the anxiety that often pairs with intelligence.
Reasonable. I did a cliche where you get to be a great athlete but you have to be really dumb as a trade-off, but most pro-athletes my gut says are above average intelligence. Something like 11 out of the last 14 Super Bowl winning QB scored above a 25 wonderlich, that’s a position that does require more intelligence.
Nobody here wants to bite the bullet and say they would take 20m a year and get to crazy athletic stuff with the downside that the outside world makes no sense to you.
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Never. I mean, the idea of becoming a multimillionaire by 35 and then retiring and doing whatever the heck I want is certainly appealing (way too late for me but assuming it were possible) but I don't really want to do what they do, and I like doing what my intellect allows me to do. If anything, I'd like to be way smarter - if it's possible without giving up on social skills and part of one's humanity - appears to happen way more often than I'd like.
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idk how people 'round here will respond but I've honestly never met another nerdy type (who would post in a forum like this) that would trade IQ points for athletic ability. I've met a couple who would trade at most 5 for some height or a better jawline, however
Probably virtually zero here. Maybe we are just better at thinking thru things. Being a NFL star would obviously be a lot of fun plus money.
Being good at Football and being good at being smart are obviously not exclusive of each other. But for a thought experiment the trade off between one and the other is interesting.
I don’t know why but the WR position in the NFL seems to have a lot of people who can do crazy stuff physically but also seem to be completely dysfunctional outside of football. AB is the best brand. But there are others. Henry Ruggs couldn’t mentally realize that 160 mph in a Ferrari drunk has a significant risks of killing someone and ended up in jail. In the NBA Ja Morant got that too.
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Depends on how much you have to spare. It's a gaussian, so if you're just IQ 120 or something, losing five points means you have hundreds of millions of new intellectual peers to compete against. But if you're, I don't know, IQ 150, going down to IQ 145 means you're still the smartest person in almost any random room. If your ultimate goal is not revolutionizing your field, but living a good life, sacrificing 5 IQ points to add 5 reps to your lifts is probably a fair trade.
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The short answer is I would much rather be me than Antonio Brown. The problem with being really strong and fast while also being violent and dumb is I don't think you appreciate your body as much.
The other problem of of course, I can reach half of Antonio Brown's physical prowess through exercise, whereas he's always going to be the same mentally.
That said, I would trade some of my IQ points for some improved baseline athletic ability. If this were an RPG character screen, then I'd shift some things around.
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