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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2580 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 2, 2022

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I just had this experience in a discussion with someone, and I saw a pattern or script of responses I’m sure some of you have seen before. Intelligence came up, and I was met with “everyone is unique, with their own unique set of abilities, there is no such thing as intelligence.” [Mention IQ] “Oh, wasn’t that debunked by some studies recently?” [Disagrees] “Well IQ tests are just biased towards rich people that know about regattas.” [Deny the regatta myth] “Well all they are measuring is ability to take IQ tests” etc etc etc

I’m not really expecting to persuade somebody to change their mind, but the feeling of going up against this was so daunting. I just felt like I was going up against a castle built by decades of anti-intelligence messaging, and in a Bayesian sense their priors against the very concept of intelligence were so strong that just nothing I could say would even budge them. How do you respond to this? Probably the answer is just walk away. I’m not even sure what I am looking for since I know persuasion really isn’t on the table, but just how do you respond when this comes up in conversation? The person I was speaking with was extraordinarily civil, and not at all upset by my statements fwiw

Just get good at rhetoric?

"Of course you are not saying that every person has the same innate ability right? We are aware that people who have been exposed to lead experience cognitive decline, or what about child geniuses, do you really think the average 5 year old can be just taught calculus like {insert child prodigy}?"

Iterate that 100 billion times over. Citing psychometric papers won't work, the gap is in the fact that he doesn't believe that "brainpower" is something that can vary! Let alone that IQ test scores correlate with that. First establish the foundations required, then build on top of that..

Basically map out in your head what are the assumptions you take for granted to believe what you believe, then see what assumptions he is lacking. You will have to convince him of the presuppositions/assumptions first before you can convince him of the conclusion.

Convincing someone of anything is an extremely long/difficult/low success rate process. And to be honest with you, most people don't believe things on principle or theory, they believe what their community believes. So the ultimate long con is that you appear as a good faith actor in and outside of the dialogue and he ultimately begins trusting you more and opens his mind towards what you are peddling. Sometimes words and arguments can only do so much.

I usually mention that IQ is good at making predictions and correlates to lots of interesting things, and people typically accept that. Usually it's not necessary to press the intelligence/IQ thing too hard, but I guess it depends on what exactly the point you were hoping to make was.

Someone who completely disagrees with you, remains civil, and does not walk away from the discussion? Neither should you! Explore the source of your differences.

A somewhat related question, but just how does this outright denial of intelligence as a concept square with every day experience? I don’t even understand how this quasi religious taboo can hold up. I mean, are dogs not less intelligent than humans? Do dog breeds not differ in intelligence? Have they ever interacted with someone vastly less or more intelligent than themselves? When you interact with someone maybe 40 or 50 pts lower than yourself the difference is just glaring, I just don’t even understand how you can hold to a denial of intelligence in light of such experiences.

Isn't that where this wonderful neologism "neurodiverse" comes in? They're not dumb, they're different! The onus for figuring out a way to interact with them is on you because you're part of the privileged neuro...neuronormal? majority! I joke, but also maybe not. Maybe this actually is the next woke expectation to come up?

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