”I think you make a mistake to make a generalization of intelligence, you assume a universalized definition when, in reality, there is no single definition of what we mean when we talk about it.”
I think the rest of your comment detracts from this initial statement because it claims a lot and extraordinarily strong claims need extraordinarily strong evidence. It was also a very politicalized comment.
While naturally sometimes things just are political, when things toe a political party line it can sound more like rhetoric and less like rational argument and that can ring alarm bells in people’s heads. I think for political comments especially, more evidence is needed per claim because people are prone to motivated reasoning when things are tribal, I know I am certainly less rational when it comes to my political beliefs than my beliefs about chemistry, for example (I think this is probably true also of things that toe the “EA party-line” but as this is the EA forum, it makes sense that things that are more commonly thought in the EA community get justified less than they would on a forum about any other topic, but I know that I have a bias towards believing things that are commonly believed in the EA community and I really should require more evidence per claim that agrees with the EA community to correct this bias in myself, a thing that maybe I should reflect on more in the future).
I think that your comment could have been improved by 1) making it several separate comments so people could upvote and downvote the different components separately (I am such a hypocrite as my comments are often long and contain many different points but this is something I should also work on), 2) if you feel strongly that the more political parts of your comment were important to your core point, and you strongly suspect that there are parts that are true that could be fleshed out and properly justified, it would be better to maybe pick one narrow claim you made and fleshed it out a lot more, with more caveats on the bits you’re more or less confident on/that seem more or less backed by science (I personally don’t feel like those bits were important to your overall point but that’s maybe because I don’t fully understand the point you were trying to make).
I also wanted to say sorry you got downvoted so much! That always sucks, especially when it’s unclear what the reason is.
It can be hard to tell whether people disagree with your core claim or whether people felt you didn’t justify stuff enough.
I didn’t upvote or downvote but I both strongly agreed with your first sentence and felt a bit uncomfortable about how political your comment was for the reasons stated above and that might be the same reason other people downvoted.
I hope my comment is more helpful and that it wasn’t overly critical (my comments are also far from perfect)!
I thought it was worth saying that at least one reader didn’t completely disagree with everything here even if your original comment was very downvoted.
What we colloquially call “intelligence” does seem multi-dimensional, it would be very surprising to me if many people reading your comment disagreed with that (they might just think that there is some kind of intelligence that IQ tests measure that is not racist or ableist to think is valuable in some contexts for some types of tasks even if there are other types of intelligence that are harder to measure that also might be very valuable).
FWIW, I am both mixed race and also have plenty of diagnoses that makes me technically clinically insane :P (bipolar and ADHD), so if one counter-example is enough, I feel like I can be that counter-example.
I’d like to think the type of intelligence that I have is valuable too—no idea if it easily measurable in an IQ test (I don’t think IQ tests are very informative for individuals so I’ve not taken one as an adult).
Seeing my type of intelligence as valuable does not mean that other types of skills/intelligence can’t be valued too and I, personally, don’t think it makes much sense to see it as ableist or racist to value my skills/competencies/type of intelligence. We should still also value other skills/types of intelligence/competencies too.
I do think that professions that, on average, women tend to do more of and men tend to do less of, for whatever reason, are valued less (eg. paediatricians versus surgeons). I would guess that this is a type of sexism. Is this the kind of thing you were trying to point to?
I could agree with the part where I assume things related to the IQ, but I make those assumptions having previously read other EA members with clearly essentialist and biologist ideas regarding the subject of intelligence, ideas that also are also quite far from being rational. Continuing with that, in the third paragraph I comment on the problem of naturalizing something -intelligence- for which we have evidence and consensus is not as stated.
Understanding the politicization behind my following arguments, where I speak from a perspective beyond rationalist or philosophical could be the most correct thing in which I could reaffirm myself. For the next time, I might start with something about this.
I understand therefore what you say about politicization in the last paragraphs that I expose, for the next time I think I could focus more on possible evidence regarding this, something that I did not think about for a short and brief comment like this one at the beginning.
I strongly agree with:
”I think you make a mistake to make a generalization of intelligence, you assume a universalized definition when, in reality, there is no single definition of what we mean when we talk about it.”
I think the rest of your comment detracts from this initial statement because it claims a lot and extraordinarily strong claims need extraordinarily strong evidence. It was also a very politicalized comment.
While naturally sometimes things just are political, when things toe a political party line it can sound more like rhetoric and less like rational argument and that can ring alarm bells in people’s heads. I think for political comments especially, more evidence is needed per claim because people are prone to motivated reasoning when things are tribal, I know I am certainly less rational when it comes to my political beliefs than my beliefs about chemistry, for example (I think this is probably true also of things that toe the “EA party-line” but as this is the EA forum, it makes sense that things that are more commonly thought in the EA community get justified less than they would on a forum about any other topic, but I know that I have a bias towards believing things that are commonly believed in the EA community and I really should require more evidence per claim that agrees with the EA community to correct this bias in myself, a thing that maybe I should reflect on more in the future).
I think that your comment could have been improved by
1) making it several separate comments so people could upvote and downvote the different components separately (I am such a hypocrite as my comments are often long and contain many different points but this is something I should also work on),
2) if you feel strongly that the more political parts of your comment were important to your core point, and you strongly suspect that there are parts that are true that could be fleshed out and properly justified, it would be better to maybe pick one narrow claim you made and fleshed it out a lot more, with more caveats on the bits you’re more or less confident on/that seem more or less backed by science (I personally don’t feel like those bits were important to your overall point but that’s maybe because I don’t fully understand the point you were trying to make).
I also wanted to say sorry you got downvoted so much! That always sucks, especially when it’s unclear what the reason is.
It can be hard to tell whether people disagree with your core claim or whether people felt you didn’t justify stuff enough.
I didn’t upvote or downvote but I both strongly agreed with your first sentence and felt a bit uncomfortable about how political your comment was for the reasons stated above and that might be the same reason other people downvoted.
I hope my comment is more helpful and that it wasn’t overly critical (my comments are also far from perfect)!
I thought it was worth saying that at least one reader didn’t completely disagree with everything here even if your original comment was very downvoted.
What we colloquially call “intelligence” does seem multi-dimensional, it would be very surprising to me if many people reading your comment disagreed with that (they might just think that there is some kind of intelligence that IQ tests measure that is not racist or ableist to think is valuable in some contexts for some types of tasks even if there are other types of intelligence that are harder to measure that also might be very valuable).
FWIW, I am both mixed race and also have plenty of diagnoses that makes me technically clinically insane :P (bipolar and ADHD), so if one counter-example is enough, I feel like I can be that counter-example.
I’d like to think the type of intelligence that I have is valuable too—no idea if it easily measurable in an IQ test (I don’t think IQ tests are very informative for individuals so I’ve not taken one as an adult).
Seeing my type of intelligence as valuable does not mean that other types of skills/intelligence can’t be valued too and I, personally, don’t think it makes much sense to see it as ableist or racist to value my skills/competencies/type of intelligence. We should still also value other skills/types of intelligence/competencies too.
I do think that professions that, on average, women tend to do more of and men tend to do less of, for whatever reason, are valued less (eg. paediatricians versus surgeons). I would guess that this is a type of sexism. Is this the kind of thing you were trying to point to?
Hi, thank you for your comment.
I could agree with the part where I assume things related to the IQ, but I make those assumptions having previously read other EA members with clearly essentialist and biologist ideas regarding the subject of intelligence, ideas that also are also quite far from being rational. Continuing with that, in the third paragraph I comment on the problem of naturalizing something -intelligence- for which we have evidence and consensus is not as stated.
Understanding the politicization behind my following arguments, where I speak from a perspective beyond rationalist or philosophical could be the most correct thing in which I could reaffirm myself. For the next time, I might start with something about this.
I understand therefore what you say about politicization in the last paragraphs that I expose, for the next time I think I could focus more on possible evidence regarding this, something that I did not think about for a short and brief comment like this one at the beginning.