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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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This Reddit thread that I saw linked over on rDrama made me wonder if any studies have ever been done about the relative intelligence of straight people and gay people.

Just like there is reason to believe that some ethnic groups are more intelligent than others on average, is it possible that some sexual orientations are more intelligent than others on average? I have not tried to crunch the numbers, but it seems to me that gay people are overrepresented compared to their population size among the ranks of prominent intellectuals and artists. Not just recently, but also hundreds of years ago. Them living in high cost of living areas would add evidence to this theory.

Of course there are many possible other explanations, and the thread mentions some of them: gays have more money because they usually have no kids, gays in poor areas stay closeted out of fear of persecution and are drawn to liberal and usually also expensive cities, gays move in to poor areas and make them fashionable and then those areas become rich. Etc.

One other possible explanation that comes to my mind that I did not see in the thread is that maybe because it is easier for gay men to get laid than straight men on average, they don't have to devote as much of their minds as straights to getting laid and are thus free to focus on other things. I'm not sure about that theory, though - after all, just because getting laid is easy for you does not necessarily mean that you will spend less of your mental energy thinking about getting laid. And being a sexual minority could tend to add some level of stress that partly counterbalances the benefits of being able to easily get laid, especially in the olden days.

I suppose it is also possible that intelligent, creative gays are more likely to come out than intellectually mediocre gays, but I have no idea if there is any truth to that.

I do wonder, though, if maybe part of the reason for gay affluence and prominence is an actual intelligence difference of some sort.

There was a video that went around a few weeks ago (https://youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM) where people were asked to rank each other's intelligence from most to least. The (presumably) straight cis het white male who worked in a low intelligence field (former military) and lived in Indiana or somesuch was ranked very low by the rest of the group, but when tested ranked 2nd.

My suspicion that LGBTQIA2S+ community members appear to have such high intelligence because they're not being constantly discouraged from achievement like straight cis het white males are.

You are basically seeing the effects of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat?useskin=vector

LGBTQIA2S+ people are told that they are smart and unique and creative and wonderful and destined to do great things in the world, and as a result of that they do.

Everybody else (I'm using straight cis het white fucking males as a bit of a catchall here, since nearly everybody else can fit themselves into LGBTQIA2S+ somewhere except them) is told that they are stupid, uncreative, evil colonizers who can't dance, can't make music, stole everything they ever created, cant't go to the moon, etc. I am a straight cis het white male. Who are the role models I am supposed to be allowed to have?

Most American historical figures are still fair game. The richest men in the world do pretty well, too.

When was the last time a real person asked you about your role models, let alone dragged you over the coals for them?

Stereotype threat probably does not exist. It's publication biased to shit and what is published likely does not replicate.

Alternatively, they intentionally made a video with an "unexpected" result in order to draw interest... Like how practically all these videos work and reality tv too for that matter.

People getting to dunk on smug people is like catnip, video producers know this.

It could be as you say anyway but I wouldn't take that video as an indication of anything, except what the producers wanted and possibly their social circles. It's the opposite of a scientific investigation.

I don’t think I said it was a scientific investigation? The video is simply a visual representation of what I’m talking about and gained enormous popularity a couple of weeks ago.

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