Maybe we’ve reached the end of our rope, too — that is to say, maybe we’ve risen to a level of intelligence just high enough to create problems we’re not bright enough to solve. A kind of evolutionary Peter Principle in action.
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July 23, 2005
WB: Australopithicus robustus
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It is possible we could avoid it by removing the people who are, at the root, responsible for the forces unleashing it
But y’know, on reflection I don’t think it was “stupid” people who invented and promoted the technologies that are currently killing us — who, at the root, are responsible. In other words, I disagree with the basic premise, i.e. that cleverness (or the ability to score high marks on IQ tests, which may or may not be the same thing) is necessarily a saving grace. Perhaps it was an overdose of cleverness that got us into this situation in the first place.
Clever people invented internal combustion and “better living through chemistry;” clever people refined plutonium, discovered and rapidly figured out how to overexploit oil fields, developed nuclear and bio weapons; clever people sold unsustainable farming methods to “stupid” farmers and thus imperilled our food supply; clever people figured out how to build factory trawlers that stripmine the oceans “efficiently”; hundreds of thousands of clever people spend their careers in a nonstop PR blitz to persuade and cajole “stupid” people into hyperconsumption, and then blame the “stupid” people when the effort succeeds. (If we’re both sitting in the same boat and I’m clever enough to persuade you to drill holes in it, how clever am I really? No matter what my standardised IQ test score is?)
The human race, as a species, might actually be better off without the “clever” people. A sobering thought.
But I think the fundamental problem with Vicious’ approach is that the remaining population has to be, by self-selection, a gang of psychotic, authoritarian mass murderers. It’s hard to distinguish the reasoning from similar “eggs/omelette” efforts in historical self-justification (Stalin comes to mind, of course). We’ve heard it a few times before, the line that killing a few million people (or billion in this case) is the only way to “save” the majority (Domino Effect, Dulles Bros anyone?).
Admittedly it’s a difficult proposition. The only more egalitarian suggestion I have seen is not taken seriously by most people. Particularly the wealthiest who consume the most, who for some odd reason believe they are entitled to have as many children as they please because “they can afford them.” [moral myopia?]
I suspect that if the soi-disant “clever” people can’t come up with a better solution than organised mass murder (this is, after all, a solution very attractive to, and often resorted to by, very stupid people as well), then we aren’t as clever as we think we are…
Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 26 2005 20:22 utc | 101
However, some very tough young souls, horribly maimed and very disgruntled, do survive Hiroshima and come back to endanger national security. So the scientists are put to work to devise a Super Soul-Killer.
No job too dirty for a fucking scientist.
…
–WS Burroughs
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 26 2005 20:31 utc | 102
I am with “Truth” in this debate, I must say. Mostly.
His point seems to be that without silly (and easily exploited) people, the temptation to exploit others will go away as it becomes harder.
Maybe we need to get rid of the exploiters, not the exploitees, though?
“truth”s point that 25% of chosen deaths is more rational than 50% of random deaths stands, despite its obvious affront to our sense of fairness. But who chooses the 25%? How to make certain that it’s the right ones for such an irreversible decision…
An interesting book on that topic is “an alien light”, by Nancy Kress.
Posted by: Jerome | Jul 26 2005 21:56 utc | 103
DeAnander; what you describe is what we refer to in our household as “clever monkey syndrome,” where years and decades and pots of money are spent on brilliant scientific and industrial works that 15 minutes of sober, common-sense reflection would surely have suggested were terrible ideas.
My mother in law is a psychologist, and when the local branch of Mensa asked if they could meet at our church, she opposed it vigorously, along with the other psychologist who is a member of the congregation. They were both upset by the idea that groups like Mensa promulgate: that IQ measurements reflect the value of any individual, rather than being a tool to measure and compare abilities within a single individual, and to give them tools to deal with their comparative strengths and weaknesses. Any correlation between IQ and leading a successful life on any level is crude, at best.
Interestingly, one of the things I have discovered from her, as I do some data-entry for her, is that there is a significant difference between the IQ scores of Canadians and Americans. A Canadian who scored 100 using the Canadian norms, would score about 102 or 103 using the American norms. Since the overall genetic stock of Americans and Canadians is not that different, her conclusion is that the extreme poverty which is common in the U.S. and extremely rare in Canada is responsible for the difference. In other words, while IQ certainly has a genetic componant, there are strong environmental factors as well.
Late for the debate which I should probably stay out of since like fauxreal I have a familial interest. However in a way that is exactly why I want to comment. Before I had a personal issue with the subject of IQ I had long been leery of a classification system that (as I thought then) was only accurate when assessing middle class (by that I mean values and cultural interests rather than income) people accurately.
Working with various groups of people around this planet had taught me that formal IQ assessments were useless as an indication of the ability of people from cultures other than western/techno culture to succeed within their own culture. I quickly learned that it was also useless as indicator of how those people would succeed in western/techno culture if they had to.
example: Australian Aboriginal people had no intoxicants in their society for 10’s of thousands of years I deduce from that no evolutionary pressure has been put on that race around drink/drugs. We are told that in western societies it appears that parts of addiction may be genetic, that is some people may be more genetically susceptible to addiction than others. Imagine for a moment then a group of people who have been geographically isolated from the rest of the world for at least 30,000 years with no challenges vis a vis addiction. It is not unreasonable to suppose that since genetic susceptibility to addiction has not been an issue that there has been no natural selection based upon it. The gene could well be spread amongst 100% of the population.
That would mean that individual members of that race would not only be statistically more likely to become alcoholics/addicts, any defence they had against addiction would probably be behavioural rather than innate. I know of no IQ test that could be given to aboriginal people that would measure their resistance to addiction yet this is a vital element in determining whether an aboriginal person will survive contact with western/techno culture.
I apologise to any life scientists who may be trying to wade through this as I lack the basic tools of expression in any of those disciplines so it will be hard work. But I digress again.
I had always imagined that it was accurate measuring the potential of western bougoise people in a bourgoise culture.
I’ve got no intention of berating you all with my children’s circumstances but suffice to say that when one of my children entered the education system he/she was assessed as having an IQ the level which I had seen ascribed to a dog or somesuch. It was a very confronting time and I was painfully aware of the need not to overreact so I didn’t punch the psychologist! (no there was a bit more than that to it. The bloke had the ‘bedside manner’ of the turnip we were discussing above).
Anyway it quickly became apparent exactly what an inaccurate tool IQ testing is because my child developed many skills that in theory would be ‘beyond him/her’ (I’m not being deliberately obtuse or ‘shameful’ here it is just I feel strongly that this really not my story to tell). Those skills were developed because of some other attributes my child has eg application, thoroughness and equanamity.
The thing that I really want to say that even if this ‘truth’ person were correct in his/her assessment (that gender inspecificity was a joke, the attitudes expressed by ‘truth’ are definitely more likely to come from a male) that it would be beneficial to humanity to slaughter a large percentage of ourselves before the world does, doing it on the basis of IQ would be an ineffective method. Firstly because selecting any particular group of people would be self defeating because I am certain that one of the reason humanity has overcome most of the obstacles thus far is because of the wide variety of ‘types’ within our species. If there is a person for every eventuality on hand then yes, some will on some occasions be less successful than another ‘type’ but by the same token there will be others better able to deal with that eventuality than the norm.
Lastly the thing that really p….d me off about this contention was it carried within the seeds of another commonly held myth that gets me out to bat for my child everytime.
That myth is that people who score poorly in intelligence tests are by nature incapable of emotion and they lack empathy. In ‘truth’s’ case this surfaces as people of a low IQ being more likely to be destructive to the environment. It is one of the first things parents are often told about their children and I have to say I have found it to be completely untrue. Yesterday when I went to pick up the kids from school one of the people that works with my child made this big thing about how touched she was that my child had been upset and worried about how the death of a friend’s pet would effect the friend. I keep my mouth shut about my kid’s issues nowadays since me jumping on the soapbox might make me feel better but it has negative consequences for other people particularly my child. Suffice to say I just about vomited at the patronising tone especially since it came from an alleged professional.
So ‘truth’ you speak no truth and if your views are sincerely held all you are doing is translating common, unfounded prejudice into a type of cultural genocide.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 26 2005 22:45 utc | 105
I’ve skimmed this one, but mostly been keeping clear of it.
However…
The intelligence quotient test has never been designed to quantify a person’s intelligence. Unless they lied to me in college, it was designed with the very eugenic question in mind that has been discussed above (viz. “Who can we safely get rid of?”). It was written with a stilt towards favoring the caucasion upper-middle-class and is weighted heavily against those who come from different cultural or ethnic backgrounds… or even those who are simply more experimental in their Weltbild. As a measure of a human being’s cognitive abilities, it is next to worthless. As a measure of a human being’s relative social value, it is reprehensible.
As for MENSA… well… I have to admire that scam for its sheer chutzpah. Tell you what, if you are that desperate for validation, you can just mail your dues to me and I’ll go around telling people how smart you are. If enough insecure “geniuses” do this, maybe I’ll even get around to printing certificates for them.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jul 26 2005 23:28 utc | 106
faux real
why take the bait? The poster is scratching an instictual itch for satisfaction by pretending to be rational and intelligence based in contradistinction to who the hell knows.
Eliminate such instinctual itches, and the world will be at peace, with a traditonal bell shaped curve on traditional IQ tests. IQ is not a valid measure or predictor of the sorts of issues considered here. Some have the emotional need to pretend otherwise.
Posted by: razor | Jul 27 2005 0:38 utc | 107
It seems to me that quite a bit of the most recent research in the behavioural and cognitive sciences adds up to the news that humans — including intelligent ones — are very seldom “rational actors.”
Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 27 2005 0:58 utc | 108
@Debs is Dead:
I said a few posts back that if you can come up with some measurable quality which more accurately reflects intelligent self-interest and the a tendency towards rational decision-making better than IQ, I’d be happy to substitute it for IQ. IQ is objectionable to some on this board, and in any case leads to Mensa. (Nothing people have said makes me more sorry I picked IQ than that; Mensa is an awful group.) So out with IQ—from now on I’ll say “smart” and “dumb,” indicating positions on a continuum of the ability (and tendency) to behave that way.
It is difficult to come up with a situation in which dumb people, under this definition, have performed a service to the survival of humanity which could not be equally well performed by smart ones, and if you consider the troubles caused by their existence, the balance is tipped against them. Someone with intelligent self-interest does not chop down the last tree on the island. That’s dumb. On the other hand, someone who buys an SUV, then approves of a war to keep the fuel price low is definitely dumb.
The problem is that I can’t think of a measure of intelligent self-interest which can be measured as consistently as IQ can, and part of the presumption in my hypothetical situation is, basically, that a fast decision has to be made and applied evenly (to make it stick). Even though the correlation between IQ and smartness (to use the new term) is not very good, it does seem to exist at least to some extent. If you have a measure that will represent dumb and smart (as I am using them here) more accurately, please speak up; I would be genuinely glad to hear about it. (It would be an interesting topic to me.)
The “measurable” part is the hard part. Consider, for example, using greed as an indicator. George W. Bush, for example, is greedier than any person on this board—I think we have enough evidence of that to make the assumption. But although some of us on this board are probably greedier than others, how could anyone possibly put us in order that was not highly subjective? By observing us closely over a period of weeks? What happens if, say, I am actually greedier than razor, but by coincidence razor is richer than I am, and therefore more able to indulge in his greed, while I have to grin and bear it?
If there truly were a situation like my hypothetical one, where the elimination of a segment of the population was necessary to avoid losing nearly all of the population, then no matter what choice is made, the survivors are self-selected murderers; the only difference is one of degree, and of victim. Picking the (presumably unwilling) victims makes the survivors murderers, but refusing to pick any victims causes a greater number of unwilling deaths. Can you think of a better definition of “murderer” than someone who causes someone else’s death without their consent?
Put it another way: suppose that you are kidnapped by a madman, and when you awaken, tied up in his hideout in the middle of nowhere, he tells you “I have kidnapped eight people who are acquaintances of yours, but not close friends or relatives. They are tied to chairs. Under each of the chairs is a bomb. All the bombs but one will go off when I flip this switch“and I have wired them up so that the one which does not go off will be picked at random. But if you’ll give me four names, I will disconnect the bombs under those people’s chairs, and all the remaining bombs will explode. This offer cannot be negotiated; you have thirty seconds.” It’s vastly less likely than my other hypothetical situation, but it poses a similar (though not the same) problem. To me, if you refuse to name anyone, you have three more deaths on your hands than if you rattled off four names as fast as possible, no matter which four you choose. In my ecological hypothetical situation, nature plays the role of the madman, the eight people (number chosen because it is divisible by 4, and I was using 75 and 50 percent) represent the world’s population. I claim that picking some group, no matter which, is preferable to not picking. I was originally suggesting that the pick would be best made on IQ. You say that IQ is a bad basis for judgement because of racial and/or gender bias. Fair enough. Well, then, what would be an acceptable way to pick?
Let’s say, just to give you a framework, that 90% of the world agrees that the disaster is coming, and that it can be averted by eliminating roughly 20% of the population within the next 100 days, and by an 80% worldwide vote—an overwhelming majority for this sort of thing— they have picked you to decide who lives and dies because of your general decency and intelligence as displayed on this discussion board, and have promised that you will be protected after the fact, even if all 20% is taken from their ranks. Furthermore, the disaster will threaten the world again if the population ever reaches the same level, so they would like you to leave behind people who are wise enough to be careful about the population level. What would be your suggestion? (Anyone else is welcome to give me an answer. All this started with a throwaway comment, but now I’m interested.)
Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Jul 27 2005 7:23 utc | 109
Vicious,
Trying to figure out why your posturing remindes me of the prison warden in Lena Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties, and why my reaction finds sympathy in the Giannini characters ultimate triumpth over this notion of superiority in rote “intellegence”. The truth is only vicious when you convince yourself you have it.
Posted by: anna missed | Jul 27 2005 10:31 utc | 110
I’d probably pass your test, Truth Gets…, but would my children? Someone pointed out that environmental factors (e.g. having George W. Bush as your dad) are important in building how we behave.
Your example of the madman… Well I wouldn’t name anyone. The man’s mad, fer the sake of cheese. Why trust anything he says? In the same way, nature is not making ultimatums. Any “intelligent” (by which I mean emotionally and “can add fourteen to seven in their head”)person would know “instinctively” that the murder of billions of people–the willed execution of billions–is the wrong choice. It may be the case that the alternative is even more random deaths.
But how can you know?
Robert Anton Wilson claimed to be an optimist because, “Optimists are happier and healthier. Also, optimists, assuming their are solutions, will go looking for them and are therefore more likely to find them.”
I can’t remember the exact quote, so I made have made that up.
Me? I believe we have over-developed our brains. We are losing our senses, smell in particular (only gross gets through smog), taste (Guy Debord has a riff about French agribusiness destroying the taste of French wine–
I’m rambling. Point is, Truth Gets…, all your hypotheses (and I think I am Taoist in this) fail. If people voted for you… If you had a hundred days… If we all knew the facts… If people could be rounded up in that time…
You will not round up 3 billion people. But you could kill 3 billion, which is scary, coz I may well be one of them. So, please don’t.
How about inventing the breakthrough solar device? That’d be cool.
Argh, I’m so off topic, sorry, going, gone, argh!
Posted by: Argh | Jul 27 2005 11:02 utc | 111