+4 SD and stuck. If I had succeeded initially I would not be right with God and would not be a good person. Now I know and suspect so much it is difficult to reconcile with the world on its terms. You present good considerations.
Reminds me of the old joke: A supersmartie, a midwit and a preist walk into a bar. The lights go out because half of the transformers in the electrical grid are over 50 years old.
As long as we are telling old jokes, - A little boy had stopped eating his breakfast and asked his mother, “Why is my daddy bald-headed”? His mom answered, “You dad thinks a lot which produces heat and this makes his hair fall out”. He was quiet a while and then asked, “Mama, why do you have so much hair”? His mom got quiet, then said, “Shut-up and eat”.
I was the stupid kid in my family. I was told that I was stupid. That I should not try hard. That the best I could hope for was to find a man that would be a good provider.
I didn’t listen to them as I thought they were all crazy. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade. Detoured, worked odd jobs and eventually acquired a GED and went to college. IQ test showed my IQ at 121 - much higher than I ever imagined. Plus, I never made below a 4.0 in college.
College was a huge disappointment. I dreamed of college being a citadel of learning.
College ended up being an indoctrination center. I mostly got them 4.0’s from kissing the professors asses. Just tell them what they want to hear, if that fails threaten them with going to the administration. Threaten their livelihood. It’s that simple.
I’m thinking 121 IQ might be the sweet spot. Meaning not to dumb, not to smart. I can still get on the same level as a 100 IQ person, and this I believe is a good thing. The average IQ in America is around 100, so being able to connect with the majority population is a plus.
I do see how very high IQ individuals can feel alone and not understood. Like… the masses can’t connect or even understand what a high IQ mind goes through. How it operates. How those minds need feed new information all the time.
High IQ people are not content mindlessly watching TV programming. Low IQ people can watch TV programming all day long…
Now we have a genus in our pocket. High IQ AI revolution. I’m told schooling is so not where it’s at anymore.. why bother in the age of AI 🤷♀️
One thing one can practice is to talk abstractly to people. Most do not understand it, find it boring and leave one alone. Those that do understand the abstract are worthy of the effort.
My dad had a college education, and was also a construction worker for most of his life. He took pains to teach me that even though many of his coworkers were uneducated, they weren't stupid. They may not have been interested in discussing Plato, but they could take apart and rebuild a car engine without referring to a manual.
This lesson has served me well.
Since then, I've come to believe that intelligence is not the reigning quality of the human mind - rather, it's wisdom. A person of average intelligence can possess wisdom, and do well with it. A genius can utterly lack wisdom, and screw things up royally.
No one will ever care about my Special Thoughts concerning Plato and Thomas Ligotti. Reading this stuff gives me something to chew on and helps keep my mind sharp. But the real questions are, do I have the wisdom to help the people of my hometown, and the strength of will to do as needed?
One of the biggest problems for BBNs, especially in the political sphere, is understanding the tightrope of Act vs. Rule utilitarianism. Although most BBNs are post-national in their thinking, at least some BBNs have read enough of the social psychology to understand there is simply no way to remove the civic ingroup of patriotism and putting one's fellow citizens first, without a general devolution in social trust to the extent that society degrades to competing interest groups, in a state perilously close to civil war.
The military understands the value of Act utilitarianism. It often makes absolutely no net positive sense to throw away lives in the pursuit of the recovering hostages. But they do it. Men write letters to their families warning them not to speak out of turn about their commitment and sacrifice. They understand the deep truth found in the statement 'there but for the grace of God go I'. They've contemplated the prospect of capture themselves. Most who engage in hostage recovery have trained in being captured, and are all too aware of the need to hold out for as long as possible, before drip-feeding their captors with intel, aware that each gem of information is a grain of sand running through a macabre hour glass. They are willing to spend their own lives because they expect their comrades would do the same for them, if positions were reversed.
Most who become involved in politics are Rule utilitarians by default, and by 'virtue' of their tertiary education. There should be a ferry question given to every aspiring politician. If one ferry contained your fellow citizens and the other contained foreigners, and you could save the lives of only one ferry, under what circumstances would you choose the lives of the foreigners over citizens? Answers which don't involve children or a large number of additional lives saved would be disqualifying at the ballot box. Most politicians in the West are Rule utilitarians, even though many are in the closet.
The other problem for BBNs is confusing general intelligence with specific domain knowledge. Many areas of public policy cannot be brute forced with general intelligence alone. I consider myself fairly well-versed on housing, having worked for a major supplier to the building trade and in retail banking, but Kevin Erdmann's substack on finance and housing had me thinking about deep problems within finance in relation the housing market, which a standard critique of housing re: 'it doesn't conform to the efficient market hypothesis' simply doesn't address.
Excellent point. Laws and rules aren't an end in themselves, they're a means to an end. But many smart and not-so-smart PMCs get the idea that laws are written in stone and must be followed to the letter without concern for the spirit. When this happens, all activity gets tangled in red tape. And many political pundits get so tied up in their theory that they're unable to put it into any workable practice.
The other problem is that most people are instrumental rationalists when they’ve committed to a position. I always knew it was a problem, but the pandemic made me realise just how incapable most people were of changing their minds.
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts." — Bertrand Russell
I keep pushing the book by Hofman, The True Believer. It outlines how to get a mass movement going. Excellent work, if you've not read it. I find it trying so few who foam at the mouth for change will take the time to read up on HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
Books like The True Believer give an outline for making a change in the world.
One thing you touched on about smarties: they need to know themselves if they are to succeed. You may not be the energetic zealot the job of changing the world requires. If not, don't try it. If you are not a 'people person,' you will fail. If you have no patience with lowbrows, leave them be. You may be an asset but not the leader. You will need to compromise with people even when what they want is counterproductive. And so on.
Another thing about smarties: they tend to believe if they think it, it must be true. They forget things are complex and it often takes some experience to get the expertise to add to the intellectual understanding.
+4 SD and stuck. If I had succeeded initially I would not be right with God and would not be a good person. Now I know and suspect so much it is difficult to reconcile with the world on its terms. You present good considerations.
Reminds me of the old joke: A supersmartie, a midwit and a preist walk into a bar. The lights go out because half of the transformers in the electrical grid are over 50 years old.
As long as we are telling old jokes, - A little boy had stopped eating his breakfast and asked his mother, “Why is my daddy bald-headed”? His mom answered, “You dad thinks a lot which produces heat and this makes his hair fall out”. He was quiet a while and then asked, “Mama, why do you have so much hair”? His mom got quiet, then said, “Shut-up and eat”.
I was the stupid kid in my family. I was told that I was stupid. That I should not try hard. That the best I could hope for was to find a man that would be a good provider.
I didn’t listen to them as I thought they were all crazy. I dropped out of school in the seventh grade. Detoured, worked odd jobs and eventually acquired a GED and went to college. IQ test showed my IQ at 121 - much higher than I ever imagined. Plus, I never made below a 4.0 in college.
College was a huge disappointment. I dreamed of college being a citadel of learning.
College ended up being an indoctrination center. I mostly got them 4.0’s from kissing the professors asses. Just tell them what they want to hear, if that fails threaten them with going to the administration. Threaten their livelihood. It’s that simple.
I’m thinking 121 IQ might be the sweet spot. Meaning not to dumb, not to smart. I can still get on the same level as a 100 IQ person, and this I believe is a good thing. The average IQ in America is around 100, so being able to connect with the majority population is a plus.
I do see how very high IQ individuals can feel alone and not understood. Like… the masses can’t connect or even understand what a high IQ mind goes through. How it operates. How those minds need feed new information all the time.
High IQ people are not content mindlessly watching TV programming. Low IQ people can watch TV programming all day long…
Now we have a genus in our pocket. High IQ AI revolution. I’m told schooling is so not where it’s at anymore.. why bother in the age of AI 🤷♀️
One thing one can practice is to talk abstractly to people. Most do not understand it, find it boring and leave one alone. Those that do understand the abstract are worthy of the effort.
I figure I'm not too smart and not too dumb, but reading this I think I might be smarter than most doctors and lawyers, lol.
My dad had a college education, and was also a construction worker for most of his life. He took pains to teach me that even though many of his coworkers were uneducated, they weren't stupid. They may not have been interested in discussing Plato, but they could take apart and rebuild a car engine without referring to a manual.
This lesson has served me well.
Since then, I've come to believe that intelligence is not the reigning quality of the human mind - rather, it's wisdom. A person of average intelligence can possess wisdom, and do well with it. A genius can utterly lack wisdom, and screw things up royally.
No one will ever care about my Special Thoughts concerning Plato and Thomas Ligotti. Reading this stuff gives me something to chew on and helps keep my mind sharp. But the real questions are, do I have the wisdom to help the people of my hometown, and the strength of will to do as needed?
One of the biggest problems for BBNs, especially in the political sphere, is understanding the tightrope of Act vs. Rule utilitarianism. Although most BBNs are post-national in their thinking, at least some BBNs have read enough of the social psychology to understand there is simply no way to remove the civic ingroup of patriotism and putting one's fellow citizens first, without a general devolution in social trust to the extent that society degrades to competing interest groups, in a state perilously close to civil war.
The military understands the value of Act utilitarianism. It often makes absolutely no net positive sense to throw away lives in the pursuit of the recovering hostages. But they do it. Men write letters to their families warning them not to speak out of turn about their commitment and sacrifice. They understand the deep truth found in the statement 'there but for the grace of God go I'. They've contemplated the prospect of capture themselves. Most who engage in hostage recovery have trained in being captured, and are all too aware of the need to hold out for as long as possible, before drip-feeding their captors with intel, aware that each gem of information is a grain of sand running through a macabre hour glass. They are willing to spend their own lives because they expect their comrades would do the same for them, if positions were reversed.
Most who become involved in politics are Rule utilitarians by default, and by 'virtue' of their tertiary education. There should be a ferry question given to every aspiring politician. If one ferry contained your fellow citizens and the other contained foreigners, and you could save the lives of only one ferry, under what circumstances would you choose the lives of the foreigners over citizens? Answers which don't involve children or a large number of additional lives saved would be disqualifying at the ballot box. Most politicians in the West are Rule utilitarians, even though many are in the closet.
The other problem for BBNs is confusing general intelligence with specific domain knowledge. Many areas of public policy cannot be brute forced with general intelligence alone. I consider myself fairly well-versed on housing, having worked for a major supplier to the building trade and in retail banking, but Kevin Erdmann's substack on finance and housing had me thinking about deep problems within finance in relation the housing market, which a standard critique of housing re: 'it doesn't conform to the efficient market hypothesis' simply doesn't address.
Excellent point. Laws and rules aren't an end in themselves, they're a means to an end. But many smart and not-so-smart PMCs get the idea that laws are written in stone and must be followed to the letter without concern for the spirit. When this happens, all activity gets tangled in red tape. And many political pundits get so tied up in their theory that they're unable to put it into any workable practice.
The other problem is that most people are instrumental rationalists when they’ve committed to a position. I always knew it was a problem, but the pandemic made me realise just how incapable most people were of changing their minds.
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts." — Bertrand Russell
To paraphrase Homer Simpson: “To BBNs, the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”
SPS certainly applies to the "best and the brightest" who gave us the Vietnam war, including groupthink.
He who suffers more can also find higher beatitude.
I keep pushing the book by Hofman, The True Believer. It outlines how to get a mass movement going. Excellent work, if you've not read it. I find it trying so few who foam at the mouth for change will take the time to read up on HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD.
Books like The True Believer give an outline for making a change in the world.
One thing you touched on about smarties: they need to know themselves if they are to succeed. You may not be the energetic zealot the job of changing the world requires. If not, don't try it. If you are not a 'people person,' you will fail. If you have no patience with lowbrows, leave them be. You may be an asset but not the leader. You will need to compromise with people even when what they want is counterproductive. And so on.
Another thing about smarties: they tend to believe if they think it, it must be true. They forget things are complex and it often takes some experience to get the expertise to add to the intellectual understanding.
Good essay.
I think it’s for a eurabiamania episode about Turing tests, sir!