[HN Gopher] Intelligent people are better judges of the intellig...
___________________________________________________________________
Intelligent people are better judges of the intelligence of others
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...
Author : 01-_-
Score : 84 points
Date : 2026-04-06 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psypost.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psypost.org)
| david-gpu wrote:
| I guess this supports a vague belief that I have held for
| decades: it is really difficult to rank the intelligence of
| people who are smarter than you
|
| Through work I had the privilege of being around lots of people
| who were smarter than me, but if somebody asked me to rank them
| from "somewhat smarter" to "much smarter", I would have had a
| hard time.
|
| Just an anecdote! I don't have any hard evidence.
|
| I also wondered for many years why most of them didn't quit their
| jobs when on paper they would have been able to do so, but work
| is not a great place to ask those sorts of questions.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I also wondered for many years why most of them didn 't quit
| their jobs when on paper they would have been able to do so,
| but work is not a great place to ask those sorts of questions._
|
| Because they're smart enough to know neither money nor leisure
| is not the be all end all...
| nickburns wrote:
| So both are? Like, combined?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Maybe they are smart enough to realize when they have a
| good thing going (on balance).
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| > if somebody asked me to rank them from "somewhat smarter" to
| "much smarter", I would have had a hard time.
|
| It doesn't help that intelligence is many-dimensional.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| It's also difficult to write characters that are smarter than
| the writer. See how poorly TV and movie writers portray
| intelligent characters.
| helle253 wrote:
| > it is really difficult to rank the intelligence of people who
| are smarter than you
|
| a comparative example that i think about quite often, in the
| realm of TTRPG's:
|
| A smart person can play a dumb character well, usually, but a
| dumb person cannot play a smart character.
|
| Or rather, they usually end up playing a character that can be
| described as 'dumb guys idea of a smart guy', which is...
| distinct than 'smart guy'
|
| the broader point, ig: to model a level of intelligence well,
| it has to be 'within' your own, otherwise the model ends up too
| lossy!
| silvestrov wrote:
| and: a smart person can write a movie script with a stupid
| character but stupid script writers fail badly when writing
| smart characters.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| It's funny to imagine that's the reason why "aliens
| invading us" or "AI taking over" are finally defeated at
| the end of a movie with a really stupid trick.
| asar wrote:
| Always thought of this as two cars driving faster than you on
| the road. After a certain distance it's clear both are faster
| than you, but really hard to say which one is the fastest.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah no I totally agree. I feel like I have a strong sense of a
| person's intelligence and their psychological
| capacity/abilities. I just passively look for it or analyze it
| in my interactions with them. But, if I don't myself have a
| grasp of the subtle abstract layers of complexity "above" a
| certain level, I can't evaluate another person's strengths in
| those areas, so I can't sense where they sit compared to others
| (or myself)!
|
| I also think the more you know about things, the more you can
| see how well other people have integrated those things into
| their own psyche and how they employ those things, if that
| makes sense. Two people might both know a certain physics
| principle but one may elicit a far deeper and insightful
| employment of that knowledge than the other, even in casual
| situations.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Reminds me of this game show episode. I was watching it with
| friends, and I'm not sure if we all picked out who the smartest
| person would be, but I do remember we definitely figured out who
| one of the lower-ranked people would be just based on her
| blathering (I won't give it away here since people may want to
| enjoy the episode themselves).
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Reminds me of "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool
| than to speak and to remove all doubt."
| underlipton wrote:
| I haven't gotten to the end yet, but I think it's strange that
| it was initially presented as the participants taking the IQ
| test BEFORE they spoke and ranked each other, when they
| actually did so afterwards. Stereotype threat says hi.
|
| EDIT: And, at the end... Yeah~
|
| If I may blather a bit myself, though, it's interesting to note
| that the top four are likely within a margin of error. Good
| day, bad day, their rank is probably malleable. People like 5,
| IME, are quite intelligent, and I wonder if the circumstances
| affected their performance (4's too, possibly even 3's). 6...
| Well, I think that says a lot about where we are as a society.
| Though that might be the schadenfreude talking.
|
| On the other hand, you could look at the ultimate ranking as
| one that leans heavily on each individual's confidence and
| comfort in the situation. 6's oversharing might have been
| rooted in nervousness and a sense of inferiority (the kind that
| might drive someone to, say, a push for high levels of formal
| accomplishment). Whereas, as someone in the comments pointed
| out, 3 was calm and relaxed even as they were being told that
| they were definitely the dumbest person in the room repeatedly.
| 1 is tall, male, stereotyped as intelligent, academically-
| accomplished, and acknowledged as such by everyone else; he had
| the best situational advantage for his headspace, entering the
| test.
| bena wrote:
| To be fair, the range of results were from 112 to 136. Just
| over one standard deviation. Like if you gave those tests
| again, you'd likely get a slightly different order. Basically,
| 131 - 136 is kind of a tie.
|
| Now, 5 and 6 are basically locked in. You _might_ see 5 and 6
| swap _or_ 5 swap with one of the top 4 to put him in fourth and
| that person in fifth.
|
| But basically assume they've hit around the middle of their
| ability.
|
| And yes, the black haired woman did harp on their credentials a
| lot. But a lot of them did and then there was the casual racism
| in putting the clean-cut Asian guy first and classism by
| putting the military guy last.
|
| All-in-all, Jubilee is trash, as always.
| Havoc wrote:
| Bit surprised that empathy makes no difference in this. People
| with high empathy tend to be good at reading others in general so
| would have thought that at least partially translates here
| yetihehe wrote:
| People with high empathy tend to feel other's feelings more
| (sometimes to their own detriment). Emotional intelligence
| helps with reading other people.
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| >Emotional intelligence
|
| Pseudoscience.
| youoy wrote:
| Finally a comment which is clearly 100% human
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| If you believe comprehending emotions belongs in its own
| category of intelligence, I have a bridge to sell you.
| tekno45 wrote:
| you thinking selling doesn't take emotional intelligence?
| dtj1123 wrote:
| Having met many extremely intelligent people who struggle
| to understand the emotional state and responses of those
| around them, hell yeah I think it's a distinct category.
| chasd00 wrote:
| what you're describing is a mental deficiency or illness.
| Being able to understand emotional state should be
| considered normal human behavior.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Doing math, or telling a joke, or catching a ball, or
| carrying a tune are all normal human behaviors. People's
| skills at any of them vary, and we don't refer to those
| with lower skill levels in that category as mentally
| deficient or ill.
| Maxatar wrote:
| The only ways that comprehending emotions wouldn't belong
| in its own category of intelligence would be if everyone
| were equally capable of deducing the emotional state of
| others, or that performing such deduction is not
| something intellectual, or that such deduction is
| strictly a consequence of existing intellectual
| categories.
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| >The only ways that comprehending emotions wouldn't
| belong in its own category of intelligence would be if
| everyone were equally capable of deducing the emotional
| state of others
|
| Not every skill gets a whole category of intelligence.
|
| >that such deduction is strictly a consequence of
| existing intellectual categories
|
| Yes.
| Maxatar wrote:
| >Yes.
|
| The fact that you don't list these says a lot about how
| much you know on this topic.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Consider a computer with a cpu and gpu. The CPU is a
| general purpose computer. It can do literally anything.
| Including software rendering. But the GPU is purpose
| designed for graphics so it will be much more efficient
| at the job. These days the GPU is also a general purpose
| computer so it could in theory do anythign the CPU does
| too, but for many things again it will be less efficient.
|
| It's the same with emotional intelligence. The brain has
| dedicated circuitry for understanding other people. You
| can reason it through abstractly but it will be less
| efficient. You can also solve problems about natural
| science with the emotional reasoning part of the brain.
| Ever heard the expression "the atom _wants_ a full shell
| of electrons "? That's empathy.
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| No, it is more like software. You either grow up around
| others, socialise and train your intuition or you don't.
| To believe there is special circuitry really goes deep
| into the pseudoscience territory.
|
| Emotions are just another abstract concept.
| hgoel wrote:
| You're the only person here invoking "special circuitry".
| All intelligence is a mix of both learned and biological
| factors.
|
| Plus one of the big ways we evaluate the intelligence of
| other species is trying to see if they have theory of
| mind, which is intrinsically linked to social
| intelligence.
|
| Edit: Ah, the person you replied to also invoked special
| circuitry.
| hkpack wrote:
| Why not? I know people who are very good at feeling other
| people's emotions but very poor at analyzing them.
|
| In kids you can see it all the time - like a kid started
| crying because he sees others cry, but if you ask them
| why they cry - the explanation is always ridiculous.
|
| But even some adults are like that, interpreting your own
| or even others emotions is both a skill and a talent.
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| >In kids you can see it all the time - like a kid started
| crying because he sees others cry, but if you ask them
| why they cry - the explanation is always ridiculous.
|
| That's just called empathy.
| lisdexan wrote:
| Their point is that empathy is a (very useful) emotional
| response. It doesn't give you a correct model of the
| other persons mind.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Why can't it be both? We have dedicated neural circuitry
| to mirroring others' emotions, and pheromones that
| directly signal emotions between individuals.
| jjk166 wrote:
| It just isn't both. Emotional intelligence isn't
| mirroring others' emotions or smelling their pheromones,
| it is using the mind to actually understand rationally
| what is going through someone else's. It's how you can
| know what an octopus is thinking despite not having the
| neural circuitry to mirror its emotions or pick up its
| chemical signatures.
| hkpack wrote:
| I think your description would be perfect in describing a
| psychopath - i.e. someone who can rationalize and think
| about other beings logically, without actually being able
| to subconsciously empathize.
|
| Not all people like that at all. Some people really do
| feel emotions of others before being able to rationalize
| it.
| simondotau wrote:
| > It's how you can know what an octopus is thinking
|
| You mean, it's how you can assign anthropomorphised
| assumptions to the octopus. There's a world difference
| between having semi reliable predictive power and
| actually _knowing_ something.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Think of it as social intelligence if the term
| "emotional" bothers you.
|
| Solitary intelligence, in the wild, is just a different
| beast from tracking the exponential complexity of a
| social system. Everything we see--in biology, psychology
| and artificial intelligence--indicates that while these
| functions seem to share resources (you can't be an
| emotionally-intelligent idiot), they are distinct, with
| folks (and animals) possessing a lot of one and little of
| the other being observed, and their handicaps resulting
| from the lacking part being observeable, too,
| peterfirefly wrote:
| We know that emotional intelligence, in the sense of
| Machiavellian intelligence, is really just completely
| normal intelligence.
| lisdexan wrote:
| Someone could be extremely proficient in disciplines that
| are associated with 'raw' intelligence, and yet utterly
| fail at theory of mind. Anyone that has been in a college
| campus probably has seen examples e.g, Classmate might
| click instantly with real analysis but will routinely
| perplexed about why their girlfriend is mad, or why they
| are seen as abrasive.
|
| To be clear, in my experience it wasn't even a case of
| being on the spectrum or other neurodivergence. They
| simply had a bad model of other people's thoughts and
| emotions. Of course this isn't DnD, I've met people a
| order of magnitude smarter than me in the usual academics
| and with a deeper understanding of people.
|
| You might not like the terminology, but it's a real thing
| and can be independent from what we usually call
| intelligence.
| bpt3 wrote:
| How did you reach that conclusion? From the article: "Those who
| demonstrated a stronger ability to perceive emotions in others
| also judged intelligence more accurately."
|
| I guess you're surprised that empathy is not _more_ important
| than intelligence? My thought there is that perceptiveness is a
| large part of intelligence, and if you lack that, you won 't
| recognize the signs of intelligence no matter how empathetic
| you are.
| rohan_ wrote:
| i've found this to be wrong a lot actually
|
| high empathy means you feel what you _think_ the other person
| is feeling,
|
| Highly empathetic people have horrible theory of mind issues a
| lot of the time.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Kids from abusive homes are fucking impeccable at reading
| emotions, their health depended on it.
| bena wrote:
| The thing about IQ and EQ being on different ends of a spectrum
| is kind of wrong. Turns out, those people whose minds work more
| efficiently, do so across the board.
|
| In other words, smarter people are better able to gauge
| people's emotions as well.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Totally a hunch, but I always felt the (self proclaimed) "high
| EQ" people were people who generally hung out with other "high
| EQ", who generally were people that wear their emotions on
| their sleeve. Never mind mostly were interested in consuming
| content geared towards "people problems" rather than "thing
| problems".
| creatonez wrote:
| This is a worthless AI slop summary of this article (^1), posted
| to a random forum to drive traffic.
|
| ^1: https://www.psypost.org/intelligent-people-are-better-
| judges...
| exossho wrote:
| makes sense. I assume that smart people tend to hang out with
| other smart people more, and naturally learn to identify the cues
| & patterns of those. where as, if you don't hang out with many
| smart people, there is not much to recognize.
| iwalton3 wrote:
| Link to the referenced study (open access): "The good judge of
| intelligence"
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...
| ZYZ64738 wrote:
| Studies with fewer than 1,000 samples are not very meaningful.
| Maxatar wrote:
| A sample size of 198 as per this study is more than sufficient
| to draw pretty strong conclusions.
|
| The issue is not the sample size, it's that studies like these
| almost always involve a very homogenous population of young
| college students.
| uxhacker wrote:
| You mean WEIRD.
|
| (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic)
|
| But why this matters is there a challenge judging
| intelligence cross cultures?
| Maxatar wrote:
| >But why this matters is there a challenge judging
| intelligence cross cultures?
|
| I don't know for sure, but my own anecdotal experience is
| that yes, there most certainly are challenges when a person
| from one culture assesses the intelligence of someone else
| from another culture.
|
| It would be nice to know whether this is supported by
| scientific evidence, or whether this is simply my own
| personal bias at play.
| dhosek wrote:
| Assuming your samples are not biased, 1000 subjects are
| generally far more than are necessary to demonstrate an effect.
| People who complain about sample size are generally not that
| well-educated in statistics.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| A well-educated person in statistics would also mention that
| it requires a certain class of distribution. This is one of
| Nassim Taleb's favourite subject (imagine computing the
| average net worth of a random group of people and suddenly
| Bill Gates is among them)
| zaphar wrote:
| Also not replicated that I can see.
| juniperus wrote:
| except they can be
| stephbook wrote:
| I've got some personal litmus tests:
|
| 1) Syntax/semantic split. Can the person accept that a function
| called "multiplyBy5(a,b) { return a+b }" doesn't actually
| multiply by five, but adds the numbers? 2) PR speak: Does the
| person recognize that public relation speak is usually
| intentionally misleading, as in "the Russian Ministry of Defense
| said that a fire [onboard the Moskva] had caused ammunition to
| explode" (obviously caused by an Ukrainian missile and not an
| accidental fire, even though that's what's implied.) [0] 3)
| They're, their, there: There easy to tell apart, since they're
| meaning is so different. /s 4) Viewpoints: Can this person
| understand and articulate viewpoints that they consider "wrong"
| or simply don't hold themselves? 5) (new) LLM introspection: Does
| the person understand that LLMs have no secret understanding of
| themselves? An LLM like "Grok" doesn't actually understand "Grok"
| better than Gemini understands "Grok" - apart from minor
| differences in model strength maybe.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva
| doxeddaily wrote:
| Not bad litmus tests. And yes a lot of idiots seem to fail at
| steel manning. I mean if you can't steel man your opponent what
| are you even doing?
| D-Coder wrote:
| I've heard that a non-Mensan asked a Mensan what it's like at a
| Mensa event. They replied, "If I have to explain something
| during a conversation, I only have to explain it _once_."
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| Are there people that would legitimately argue point 1?
|
| If you are only looking at the call site, sure that could be
| confusing, but if you are looking at the definition as provided
| in your post, surely anyone that is able understand the concept
| of a function can see the problem?
|
| I'm not arguing they don't exist, sure they do, but I'm
| confused as to how you came up with it as a litmus test? Is it
| that common?
|
| Surely we can agree in a real scenario renaming it (or fixing
| implementation to match name) is likely appropriate, but to
| completely miss the error?
|
| Hope this comes across as curiousity, because I am curious
| about this one from your list in particular.
| krackers wrote:
| I think it's similar to the case of counterfactuals or
| hypotheticals and how well you can handle them. Lookup the
| "breakfast question" meme for instance.
| krackers wrote:
| >LLMs have no secret understanding of themselves
|
| What do you mean by "themselves" here? Grok is RL'd to behave
| like a Grok, so it trivially knows the qualities that define
| Grok better than Gemini does, which can only go by second hand
| sources.
| bahmboo wrote:
| i.e. dumb people don't know they are dumb
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| I'm going to point out that the submitter is posting their own
| site as regularly as clockwork
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=comuniq.xyz) and has a
| very long history of self-promotion of their own domains under
| previous account names cannibalXxx, gorpo85, and saturn85, etc.
| Probably the most egregious example being
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=chat-to.dev which
| eventually got banned. The submitter identifies themselves as the
| owner of the site in the comment here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43531490 , meaning that it's
| the same individual.
|
| Hopefully the HN administrators will get around to noticing this
| domain eventually as well and banning it.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Well, I mean, tone deaf people cannot accurately judge musical
| talent.
| jaffee wrote:
| And today in obvious headlines: "Game recognize game"
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I interact with people who seem about as smart as me fairly
| often- my college professors for example. And, I certainly have
| been in many situations where my domain knowledge was vastly less
| than some other person with real expertise. But I have a hard
| time thinking of a time when I thought someone else was
| significantly smarter than me. Probably, that's an example of
| exactly what the article is talking about- maybe I've met those
| people but failed to recognize them. They certainly must be out
| there (unless i am the smartest person in the world, in which
| case we're all in serious trouble).
| techblueberry wrote:
| Similar to your observation - I can think of at least one
| person who is definetly a lot smarter than than me, and yeah,
| I'm not sure I could tell you why exactly.
|
| Part of it looks like focus, I think I have a broader skill set
| than they do. But I don't know that I could like rank a set of
| people smarter than me.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| A few signs: they know what your about to say and give you
| refutations to your argument before you voice them. Or you find
| they tend to block your argumentation and you don't quite know
| how to respond. Could be domain expertise though.
|
| Or if it's a collaborative situation, they might propose an
| idea you are already kind of thinking about, but they do it
| faster and clearer.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I cannot remember the exact quote, but I thought Norm Macdonald
| nailed this idea a while back.
|
| He said something to the effect of: it's easy for a smart person
| to pretend they're dumb, but it's impossible for a dumb person to
| pretend they're smart.
|
| Norm himself was pretty good at convincing people he was dumb
| when very much the opposite was true.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| I have my doubts about Nate Bargatze being half as dumb as he
| pretends to be as well. Great comedic niche to fill, in my
| opinion.
| lisper wrote:
| > it's impossible for a dumb person to pretend they're smart.
|
| Unfortunately, that's not true. It's actually pretty easy to
| convince dumb people that you're smart, and so even dumb people
| can learn that skill. Myriad successful careers and even entire
| industries have been built on that foundation.
| WarmWash wrote:
| The truth is you can build a successful career, on a
| foundation of a successful industry, that is run for and run
| by, all idiots.
| abraxas wrote:
| I can think of a couple of presidential careers where that
| worked out for the deceivers.
| D-Coder wrote:
| I see your point, but voters are not voting based on the
| candidate's intelligence levels.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Successful people are stupid? That's the theory?
| lisper wrote:
| It worked for me. ;-)
| baddash wrote:
| game recognize game
| everdrive wrote:
| Something I have always appreciated. I'm much less anxious
| working with very intelligent people, even if their intelligence
| eclipses mine. They don't have unusual ideas about what I should
| or should not be able to grasp. They can recognize which of my
| ideas are intelligent and which of my ideas are half-baked.
|
| Working with unintelligent people, you need to spend more time
| building up a reputation. They cannot tell if you're intelligent
| based on what you say, or how you explain things -- only if you
| get results. This is nerve wracking for multiple reasons, but
| chiefly because intelligent people can be wrong, or unlucky, etc,
| and so only judging someone based on results is partially to
| judge based on luck.
| argee wrote:
| Unintelligent people can also be right, or lucky, etc, and
| someone judging on those criteria can end up getting swept up
| in making some very bad decisions based on dubious advice.
| jonplackett wrote:
| This seems pretty obvious doesn't it?
|
| Like the point of being more intelligent than someone or
| something is to an extent being able to simulate their brain and
| thinking with your own brain.
|
| We're cleverer than animals because we can simulate all their
| actions before they do them.
|
| You can't simulate something more advanced than yourself.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > You can't simulate something more advanced than yourself.
|
| Sometimes you can given more time. Many times being more
| intelligent is arriving at a conclusion faster without wasting
| as much on dead ends.
|
| A bad analogy: Magnus Carlson making a move in seconds and
| still defeating his opponent which has minutes for a move.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This seems pretty obvious doesn't it?_
|
| The opposite conclusion would also be obvious. We're a social
| species that might have deep primitives for evaluating the
| intelligence of another without needing to simulate the whole
| shebang.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I don't see how that would follow. If we are talking about
| "intelligence" in the formal sense of induction/prediction
| then it is a profoundly memory-hard problem as a matter of
| theory. This is to "learning" what the speed of light is to
| physics.
|
| You can't replace the larger simulation required (i.e. more
| state/RAM) with a faster processor.
| neonstatic wrote:
| Sticking with the computation analogy, it could be a long-
| term memory look up. If memories were passed down the
| generations, people could simply memorize actions of
| individuals deemed smarter. Over a large sample size, a
| heuristic would emerge. Kind of like knowing there is
| always a sunset following a sunrise without understanding
| the solar system.
| ai_slop_hater wrote:
| Does that mean we should use a larger model as judge for evals,
| not a smaller one?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| That was always the advice. Use the best model you can afford.
|
| But some problems are easy and you can get away with a smaller
| model.
| coffeeaddict1 wrote:
| While the linked study is interesting, using standardised tests
| is a terrible way to judge if someone is "intelligent".
|
| Also imo is very difficult to come up with a universal definition
| of intelligence. For example, I hold Lionel Messi to be a very
| "intelligent" footballer, but I would judge his intelligence to
| be of vastly different nature to that of Albert Einstein.
| pmontra wrote:
| A data point: the parent of an about 140 IQ son told me that her
| son was in a room with other 120+ IQ kids. They started to talk
| and quickly formed groups. Those groups turned out to include
| kids of very similar IQ. The ones between 140 and 143 thought
| that the ones between 137 and 139 were not interesting to talk
| with.
| go_artemis wrote:
| People often see the Jungian personality traits of "judging" vs.
| "perceiving" etc as actual exogenous traits, but it's also a
| tendency to spend more time before coming to a conclusion.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| This general idea follows from the classic theorems on the limits
| of induction on finite computers. A computer can only build an
| inductive model of another computer that is substantially simpler
| than itself in a Kolmogorov sense. This process provides a
| measure for ordering simpler computers. Computers that are
| equally or more complex are indistinguishable via induction.
|
| This is also a common basis for the concept of "free will": no
| computer can model its own behavior such that it can reliably
| predict it.
|
| To a squirrel all humans are equally, unfathomably intelligent.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| It's fairly simple to identify very smart people, but it takes
| some time. You ask them what their goals and predictions are, and
| then watch for a while.
|
| I've noticed the smarter a person is, the fewer qualms they have
| about sharing exactly what they're aiming to do.
|
| This approach is also a simple way to identify stupid people, but
| for stupid people there are much quicker methods. And stupid
| people tend to be cagey, because they have fewer tools for
| identifying when somebody is trying to take advantage of them,
| and because they've got experience being taken advantage of.
| neonstatic wrote:
| I disagree with some of your observations.
|
| Being taken advantage of is not only a function of
| intelligence. It's also a function of emotional health. Sure,
| if the person is incapable of understanding they are being
| taken advantage of, they will be. But one can be perfectly
| capable of understanding that, see it happen in real time, and
| let it happen anyway. That has been the case with me for a long
| time. I could see, but I could not stop it, because I have been
| emotionally conditioned to allow it. Took a long time to fix.
|
| There is also a risk of confusing a smart person with a person
| who speaks well. We have a built-in heuristic, that language
| signals intelligence. To a large extent it does, of course, but
| it can be deceptive. I've grown very weary of well-spoken
| people, who seem to want me to think they are also very smart.
|
| Lastly, higher intelligence does not mean the person is a
| better human being. I find that there is an obsession with
| intelligence in the West. "Stupid" people can be really lovely
| and better companions than smart ones. There is something to be
| said about kindness and honesty.
|
| > I've noticed the smarter a person is, the fewer qualms they
| have about sharing exactly what they're aiming to do.
|
| I used to be like that. Openly speaking about what I aim to do
| and how. I ended up moderating that quality a fair bit after
| noticing some people began copying my ideas or outright
| stealing them. I was to slow to execute.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| The nice thing about observing whether someone is
| accomplishing what they set out to accomplish is it doesn't
| matter how well spoken they seemed.
|
| I've found that especially smart people have preternatural
| bullshit detectors, even when they lack "emotional health" or
| the ability to socialize well with others.
|
| Smart people can be lovely, stupid people can be lovely,
| golden retrievers can be lovely... but that's tangential.
| neonstatic wrote:
| > I've found that especially smart people have
| preternatural bullshit detectors
|
| I really disagree with that. So many smart people fell for
| obvious bullshit because it appealed to their
| intellectualism. Look at all the communist sympathizers in
| the West. Morons, but also intelligent people most of the
| time. They believed stories spread by the soviet
| propaganda, because they wanted to believe them.
|
| > The nice thing about observing whether someone is
| accomplishing what they set out to accomplish is it doesn't
| matter how well spoken they seemed.
|
| It's funny that you say that - there's another poster in
| this thready who claims that looking at the output is the
| stupid people's way of evaluating intelligence. Seems like
| we really have no idea how to tell (except for an actual IQ
| test)
|
| > Smart people can be lovely, stupid people can be lovely,
| golden retrievers can be lovely... but that's tangential.
|
| Yep, I was just making a note, that intelligence might be
| overrated as a trait.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-06 23:01 UTC)