I hate the word ‘Consumer’ or I mockingly call it ‘CONSOOMER’. Because that’s to imply everyone in the world is just cattle, but with wallets. We’re no longer customers. We’re consumers now. And a consumer’s purpose is to consume shit, whatever is put out there. Got money? Shut up and consume, it’s what corporate interests and capitalism itself thrive on. Consume and consume.
“Stupid” or “smart” or “IQ”. Take your pick.
Intellectual capacity is a social darwinist fantasy.
That includes insults that go along the lines of, “Trump supporters can’t read.”
[Aside: I dislike Trump supporters, mind you. But if they couldn’t read (especially reading Breitbart, or the Epoch Times, or the text part to Russia-funded propaganda memes) that would actually be an improvement right now. Lower cognition would be an improvement if it were real.]
Anyways my reasons are as follows: I’ve tutored quite a few people, and never found one actually incapable of learning a particular concept.
I have, on the other hand, found a large number who were underconfident about their ability, citing their “low” intelligence specifically. And unlike their intellectual capacity, this belief in IQ was actually limiting. And harmful.
I have also encountered people (outside of my tutoring) who thought their “intelligence” was a source of superiority over the masses.
They were not superior people. Their vocabulary – which people often use as a misguided proxy for intelligence – was offputting because they often used words they had clearly never heard used in context. Indicating these words were added to their lexicon unorganically, pulled from a dictionary or thesaurus rather than an adventure novel, highlighting a strange set of priorities that always made these people suspicious to me.
Every time someone calls me smart, I tend to suspect they’re trying to scam me.
Every time someone calls me stupid, I shrug because they clearly haven’t met all of the people who call me smart.
But in all cases, they are invoking the idea that some people are just capable of more, and others are just capable of less. It’s social darwinism, like I said.
And I find it disgusting.
If you want my respect, never appeal to social darwinism in my presence.
I agree that people throw terms like smart/intelligent around incorrectly, and often try to “sound smart”, and I cringe at those things too.
…but you’re also asserting that intellectual capacity doesn’t exist and that is incorrect, or at least incomplete.
–TL;DR– Intelligence is valuable and varies between people but it seems like everyone has the ability to be intelligent given the right conditions. The taboo around intelligence prevents us from getting underperforming kids the help they need.
The important truth is that we don’t fully understand what contributes to intelligence.
We know that motivation is enormously important. The difference between being offered $1 and $10 explains something wild like >10 points on an IQ test. https://www.science.org/content/article/what-does-iq-really-measure
We also know that mental health and emotional state makes a big difference. So everything impacting mental health would contribute. https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-020-0372-2
These factors alone mean that our intellectual performance can change from moment to moment.
Another important distinction is that there are two kinds of intelligence, fluid and crystalized. Fluid intelligence is our ability to solve moment-to-moment interactions, and new and novel problems. Crystalized intelligence is the ability to take foundational principles that we’ve already been exposed to and use those to solve secondary, abstract, or complex problems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence
That second one is almost entirely based on the types of problems we’ve been exposed to in our lives, meaning that it’s impacted by our previous behavior and our circumstances (which are largely out of our control).
We have no reason to believe that intelligence is some kind of immutable genetic trait that some have and some don’t - in fact that’s largely been debunked as far as I know.
However, the controversial field of behavioral genetics has demonstrated that a large percentage is our personalities and behaviors are impacted by our genetics. This would be an indirect factor. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201509/what-behaviors-do-we-inherit-genes
Where does this leave us?
A person may be more genetically predisposed to being hard working (trait conscientiousness), which may make them more likely to apply themselves to work and education, meaning that they have a higher intellectual capacity. Or, they may just follow instructions without thinking and have a lower intellectual capacity.
A person may experience an event that makes them highly value health, motivating them to become a doctor. Or they may behind afraid of medicine and avoid the subject altogether.
Similarly, a person may be told that they are stupid and that they will never amount to anything. They may believe it and give up, and never apply themselves. Or they may defy it and work harder to prove it untrue.
Your genetics and your circumstances don’t determine what you will be capable of. However, they do have an impact. Ignoring that would be an enormous mistake.
Having two mentally healthy parents in a stable home with many books and many adults that care about you in your community will give you a better chance at scoring higher on IQ tests.
Having a single parent that’s drug addicted and bouncing from home to home with no books and no caring adults in your community gives you a lower chance of scoring higher on IQ tests.
Higher IQ is correlated with a whole bunch of benefits, like having higher income and life expectancy.
The original implementation of IQ was to identify which school children needed intervention to help them succeed. It was never supposed to be an indicator of human value. That we’ve done that to it is a shame. It’s basically the best tool that we have to figure out which kids need the most help.
I haven’t found research that confirms raising IQ improves outcomes. But I have a hard time believing that helping kids learn (if they wanted the help, at least) would hurt their outcomes.
End rant.
Edit: oh, and the belief in intelligence as an immutable genetic trait is only social darwinism if higher intelligence makes people more likely to reproduce, which it doesn’t. That’s the premise behind Idiocracy. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25131282/
That’s what I thought at first too. But the definition, oddly enough, doesn’t actually mention reproduction.
From Merriam-Webster
It’s most often used to describe Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” which was all about the superiority of some members of society, and the benefits society would reap by allowing them power over everyone else and over all of society’s resources.
Yo, this is amazing. Yep I was completely wrong about social darwinism. I either made up the definition myself based on my understanding of Darwin, or had someone explain it to me wrong and never questioned it.
Thanks for the correction!
It’s my pleasure. I enjoy these discussions, and you brought a lot to the table.
Calling someone “stupid” or “dumb” is all too common, especially online in places like Reddit and Twitter. I think it is a lazy and vacuous statement, or at best just a way to vent frustration.
It’s much better, and more constructive, to be specific about what you find reprehensible. It could be that they have horrible morals, and calling them stupid is like a shorthand for saying that they are unable to reason through towards a consistent and correct set of moral principles. Or it could be that they have been indoctrinated into nasty world-views, and that their “stupidity” is exhibited as a failure to protect themselves from the indoctrination or escape it. Or they could be deliberately hurtful trolls who say outrageous and inflammatory things to upset others, in which case their “stupid” behavior is most likely an outward-facing reaction to some trauma in their own lives. Or maybe they are just sadistic, which warrants being called out specifically, and not just attributed to stupidity. A lot of anti-intellectual posturing seems to come from some combination of these causes.
Anyway, I feel like being specific about your criticisms not only promotes compassion (which is ultimately most likely to win over those we disagree with) but also prompts you to more thoughtfully reflect on your own positions.
💯
This right here! Specify!
Replace stuff like
with stuff like
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Yeah, it’s heartbreaking to see stuff like that.