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Notes -
Because rationalists love all things IQ, I wanted to ask something here.
Is there reason to think, and is there support for, the idea that people with low intelligence simply lack or rarely develop some of the ways of cognizing, modeling the world, modeling other people, moral cognition, granularity, etc, that highly intelligent people have? Qualitative differences, not just less speed, less depth and breadth of knowledge?
Feel free to point me at research papers or relevant chapters of books if you don't want to write at length. Thanks!
You're not teaching the average person Quantum Mechanics. You're not teaching someone with an IQ of 80 how to code or calculus, at least not beyond rote memorization.
My experience with dumb people (as patients) is that they have a worse time keeping track of multiple, interacting bits of information, an inability to predict what seems like obvious interactions and consequences, and worse memory in general.
When it comes to moral cognition, that obviously makes them worse consequentialists, and to the extent that Deontology is unworkable without a mechanism for breaking ties, bad at choosing what to sacrifice. They are also less likely to notice positive sum opportunities and defect, and while more intelligence does offer more opportunities to get a fast one over other people, it also usually makes one notice that life is an iterated game and that in most cases that's not the best idea.
I am skeptical about the "how would you feel if you if didn't have breakfast" meme, at least for 80 IQ people. Lower than that? Almost certainly. But 80 IQ people are slow but largely functional and capable of independent operation in complex society, and can probably manage that, most of the time.
It is worth noting that there are functional complex societies where the average IQ is below 80 (I live in one). In a society where the average IQ is 100, having an IQ of 60 or 70 is more likely to be due to gross cognitive issues manifesting as retardation. Whereas in a society where that is the norm, they're still functional, just dumber. In other words, something deeply broken versus something that is working as intended, just subpar in comparison.* There can also be enclaves of higher IQ people capable of running the place even if the masses are dumb (India is incredibly heterogenous due to millenia of endogamy. Brahmins are almost certainly smarter. TamBrams are notoriously so. Modeling it assuming a normal distribution of intelligence here would be a gross error)
*Racism not intended, but that is the difference between a healthy chimp and and a very retarded human. They might perform similarly on IQ tests, but one is a functional animal operating comfortably in its niche, the other isn't.
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