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?
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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.
This feels like such a clear monkey's paw situation.
You said trade for athletic ability, but then you get injured. Or you get drafted by the Jets.
And in a fair trade, my intelligence (top 1%, but by no means historic) wouldn't get me NFL starter money, maybe on a practice squad.
I also think that we probably underestimate how smart your average NFL athlete is, the theory that NFL athletes are idiots is mostly copium created by the mediocre. They seem stupid talking about the world outside football, but then some of the smartest men I know seem like complete morons the moment the topic of feeeeeeeemales comes up. I don't believe in types of intelligence, but I do believe in fields of intelligence and fields of interest.
Of course it’s a monkey paw situation because if I didn’t create a tension then there wouldn’t be something to debate. I 100% the average NFL player is average to above average intelligence. Judging by responses it seems like people really don’t like the idea of giving up intelligence.
Not sure what it is about NFL WR but a lot seem to have poor impulse. I can pick a less of a Catspaw than you get to be AB or Tyreek Hill. You can be someone like Jerome Bettis. I don’t think he’s stupid but I doubt he’s on the right tail of IQ. Hasn’t been to jail. Seems to have a likable personality. If we are being honest he probably has a better QOL but I would still hate to give up thinking skills. AB is broke and probably does end up in jail today so I’ve removed the super negative catspaw.
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NFL players have a decent-ish IQ proxy on file and their intelligence varies by position quite a bit; QB’s mostly would be honor roll students if they’d studied(QB’s, of course, are expected to study football, not academic subjects), D-linemen would… not.
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