Post B4zVZ5gqkEyabojTUm by j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz
(DIR) More posts by j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz
(DIR) Post #B4zTtu40xzvUiuMdKy by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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IQ and other psychometric assessments are not actually backed by hard science but vibesso when someone brags about having a "genius level IQ", just write them off as a narcissistsincerely, your local psychologist turned software engineer
(DIR) Post #B4zTzKiNJ3r8pNpbtY by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne what does a psychologist say about narcissism anywayi've seen probably every possible take on the internet by now
(DIR) Post #B4zU4jp1NzDw90W9GS by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@whitequark its complicated, I think in a lot of situations narcissistic behavior develops out of self loathing and the discovery that they can self soothe through maladaptive behavior
(DIR) Post #B4zUKN6vaqJIL9LdCq by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne that's useful and reasonable but i was thinking about something differenti think in practice i've mostly seen "narcissist" be used as an insult and as a leverage in an attack. this made it really hard historically to figure out how, if at all, one can make good conclusions about that type of behavior and its observations
(DIR) Post #B4zUTaZMvJL2gi2uJM by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@whitequark oh yes, it has definitely become an insult in pop culture
(DIR) Post #B4zUiSbMpUm0Ju4WQq by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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humans and other animals are complex systems, while there are diagnostic tests which measure a degree of performance in specific skill areas, you can't really boil someone's intelligence down to a single number: the person who sucks at math might be a great strategist, for example
(DIR) Post #B4zV2aGG3rQZrpnHnM by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne if someone tells me "X is a narcissist" I don't have any tools to find out if there's truth to it or they just really don't like X
(DIR) Post #B4zV2aSfJjLuUJbC8O by asie@mk.asie.pl
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@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @ariadne@social.treehouse.systemsi think it's pretty hard for an unqualified person to conclusively diagnose someone from a distance; harder, even, than self-diagnosis.flip side: is there a meaningful difference between "narcissist" and "unlikable/best to avoid, but in a non-narcissistic way" in day to day social life?
(DIR) Post #B4zVCSY9aRNkqYsDei by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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incidentally: psychometric evaluation is heavily biased toward performance in math and other hard logic categories in general, so-called IQ tests especially.also while I am dropping truth bombs: Mensa has problematic connections with the eugenics movement
(DIR) Post #B4zVZ5gqkEyabojTUm by j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz
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@ariadne The Mensa test is very good at selecting the kind of person who would take a Mensa test.
(DIR) Post #B4zVZxNZ89dX7e7pw0 by natty@astolfo.social
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@asie@mk.asie.pl @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems Doesn't that, in a way, make it a vibes-based personality assessment? Narcissistic traits are pretty common and many people work on theirs, so yeah I'd argue it's in practice a synonym for a "bad person"
(DIR) Post #B4zVeplQs2Aex7cA40 by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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if it were up to me, primary education would be focused on fostering curiosity and empathy rather than psychometric scoresbecause those are truly the critical life skillsand indeed in countries where they have gone in that direction, it turns out happiness is higher and productivity is higher
(DIR) Post #B4zVrja5AcRDXaSORM by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne wait, people use psychometric scores in primary education? that's... wild
(DIR) Post #B4zVxakEw5FdsD08Aa by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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teaching children to recognize patterns and systems is far more useful than math drills and "showing your work"similarly, teaching children to explore and express their feelings through media is more useful than most of what is taught in schooland don't get me started on common core, I once had a tutoring gig for a while and helping with common core math homework literally made me want to uninstall
(DIR) Post #B4zWHreLnEQa5wug0O by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@whitequark yes that is the backbone of american primary schooling. it is called common core. they teach to pass the tests.
(DIR) Post #B4zWRyXH2wJsLZQNWa by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@asie @ariadne there is a pretty big difference between someone who I can reasonably avoid, and someone who is likely to (upon finding a real or perceived slight) start tracking down my friends and either coercing them or lying to them as a way to get to/at me
(DIR) Post #B4zWRyiGO56steZ9ea by natty@astolfo.social
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@whitequark@treehouse.systems @asie@mk.asie.pl @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems That's a subset of a subset thoughMost people don't spend days finding our address, harassing peers into getting in touch with us, socially engineering and buying pwned information to tell us they own us and will destroy us if we spend time with people who actually care about usFor it to get this bad it's intentionally left unchecked for years or decades
(DIR) Post #B4zWS0EuiAozdCqkBU by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@asie @ariadne last time I was dealing with a (presumably) narcissist they've convinced a friend that she (friend) has weeks to live due to advanced heart disease, all based on an extreme degree of bullshit but one that you wouldn't know how to tell from truth without some training in cardiology. it was not pleasant, and it was most certainly not something I could have simply avoided (indeed I've tried doing exactly that in first place)
(DIR) Post #B4zWW227z58iLwn3xo by asie@mk.asie.pl
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@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems i'm not sure if that's specific to narcissism. i think there are other mental glitches and/or disorders which can get you to that same point. which is my point, though perhaps expressed poorly - there are better ways to describe harmful, dangerous people than borrowing psychology terms in a pop cultural kind of way. such as calling them "harmful" or "dangerous".
(DIR) Post #B4zWZSfTPiZxpMpTiy by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@whitequark @asie yes. narcisstic personality disorder has very specific diagnostic criteria.the generalized version is antisocial personality disorder, which is largely a catch-all.
(DIR) Post #B4zWmvIeGxSoONZXZg by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne that's horrible
(DIR) Post #B4zWqyCzOr4oZVr46K by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@asie @whitequark yes, "know it all" behavior is a common expression of narcissism.I hope your friend listens to the experts and follows their guidance...
(DIR) Post #B4zWyCmFdFTbmbnYGG by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne @asie through the combination of getting an incredibly useless cardiologist to do some tests and having an MD i know explain some cardiology the situation was resolved, yes. but not without them dragging me into like two other largely unrelated conflicts
(DIR) Post #B4zX62CEr5RVHegebQ by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne @asie do you some good reading material on this that I could follow, just to see if I can get a more useful interpretation of events?
(DIR) Post #B4zXAoWh6jgQKoXAa8 by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@asie @ariadne there is additional context that I'm not telling you here
(DIR) Post #B4zXAonM6n0jAUKTYG by asie@mk.asie.pl
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@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems right, i see
(DIR) Post #B4zXzrahTOTWblkYjo by MsMerope@sfba.social
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@ariadne I wish more people understood this.One of the reasons I left teaching the littles was an implementation of "cook book" curricula that required us to teach them about snow in September (in a region that doesn't even see snow in December)
(DIR) Post #B4zYJGqvm5GASTb0YS by artemist@mildlyfunctional.gay
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@whitequark @ariadne i went to special "magnet schools" for "smart children" from age 9, the entry tests seemed very much what i expect iq tests to be (lots of matching patterns, reading comprehension, and weird math problems)
(DIR) Post #B4zYJHF2KSXffEsG80 by whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
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@artemist @ariadne i don't actually know what my iq is since the only time i've knowingly taken the test (on my own) i got bored 20% in and did something more useful instead
(DIR) Post #B4zYJHSVWNJkL1B17o by artemist@mildlyfunctional.gay
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@whitequark @ariadne yeah, i took those tests because there were other interesting people i could meet that way, but i never got a number back and i actively avoided anything that referred to iq, since i rightly believed it to be an absurd metric designed to accentuate racism.
(DIR) Post #B4zYJHn4HvlRMmnRAm by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@whitequark @artemist racism and eugenics, yes
(DIR) Post #B4zYWdM5QEAG0sXa4W by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@MsMerope I feel like common core was explicitly designed to make comparative psychologists like myself angery
(DIR) Post #B4zYoU16se94GOExZA by MsMerope@sfba.social
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@ariadne we had a superintendent who proclaimed that he wanted to walk down a wing of 2nd grade classrooms and as he left one room and entered the next the teacher would be picking up the end of the sentence that the teacher in the room he just left had started.Though maybe the final straw was somebody walking up to a 4 year old on a tricycle and asking them what "performance standard" they were meeting when riding a tricycle....🤦
(DIR) Post #B4zYsS1IFOSdECDa0O by wronglang@bayes.club
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@ariadne tiny nit to pick: psychometric tests are perfectly good at measuring specific things about a person's brain function in a repeatable way. Having that kind of assessment if you have difficulties with work or school can change your life for the better.The completely careless ways educators, policy makers, the general public, and business people use the single numeric summaries of those tests is completely deranged and I agree with you completely there.IQ as a single number is bonkers.
(DIR) Post #B4za8hWCUYYxsozGAS by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@MsMerope I mean the smartassed answer to that question is "phys ed" obviously
(DIR) Post #B4zcHE5NUUVN78dMfI by crow@gts.apicrim.es
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@ariadne like...*checks notes*...the US president? :BlobCat_Think:
(DIR) Post #B4zcHEMkRuOpz0lEjw by ariadne@social.treehouse.systems
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@crow yes but at this point his brain is just mush
(DIR) Post #B500a8EzqNTvO9gGiO by juliancalaby@social.treehouse.systems
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@ariadne Best math teacher I ever had gave us a blank sheet of paper and asked us to divide 1 by every number between 1 and 50, then when we were done, showed us all the patterns we could see in all the decimals we got.
(DIR) Post #B50R7mGYeLAftB7CSm by johnlogic@sfba.social
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@ariadne @whitequark For a brief period while I was in primary school (perhaps before common core curriculum) our teachers recommended a few of us to take IQ tests (each two rounds of one-on-ones with psychologists). Not all of our parents shared our scores with us, but we all knew the minimum score that got us into the gifted program.As an adult, I realized that I could probably get admitted to Mensa, but its narcissism turned me off.
(DIR) Post #B57wOL4RTK9r9VXpJI by Arcanoraptor@furry.engineer
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@ariadne And even if it was a rigorous measurement, generally the folks who brag about IQ are unpleasant to be around