Why is this hard.
This shitpost is a collection of comments I made on a recent VP post, slightly edited to avoid definition confusion (I screwed up the terminology because I’m not careful enough).
What I found particularly amusing were those critics who simultaneously complained that I was making non-economic arguments, then insisted that my position was immoral or in violation of the human right to freely engage in economic activity. It never even crossed their mind that their arguments were considerably less economic in nature than my own.
One thing I’ve noticed is that midwits reliably fail to understand the difference between a positive argument and the critique of an opposing argument. This explains why so many people are, on the one hand, saying that my arguments are weak while so many others are impressed at how I have methodically destroyed the pro-free trade arguments. It rather reminds me of the atheist response to TIA, in which many of them expressed disappointment in the weakness of my arguments for the existence of God.
But they were only weak in that they did not exist at all. They were an altogether different creature, being critiques and debunkings of dozens of arguments against the existence of God.
Vox Day
Up and over their heads
My running theory is that the predominant group of people in the midwit range (115 to 130 IQ)—clever sillies—have fundamental deficiencies in perceiving cause-effect relations because they rely so heavily on pure association.
For instance, racism is related to Hitler. Imagine that this is a pure emotional association that goes both ways: thoughts of Hitler trigger thoughts of racism and thoughts of racism trigger thoughts of Hitler. A person who makes this association can simultaneously believe that Hitler caused German racism, and German racism caused Hitler (without contradiction), because firing one heavily associated synapse always fires the other without respect to direction.
(Nevermind the idea of feedback loops, we haven’t gotten anywhere near that in terms of cognitive ability.)
In order to have a strong sense of cause-effect relations, the incorrect direction has to be suppressed in response to cognitive dissonance over time. So in effect, a clever silly could be defined as a clever person who doesn’t experience much cognitive dissonance from contradictions. I believe this indicates a neurology with a high rate of white matter creation but a low rate of pruning.
A better example is a parent’s attitude toward kids going to college. They can simultaneously believe “kids don’t need to go to college to have financial success” and “my kid is going to college because it’s the way to financial success”, and will often say one right after the other in the same conversation.
Smart rednecks and some HFAs, two sub-populations in the midwit range, will usually have a nonverbal tilt to their IQ and thus avoid this particular problem.
It is a dysfunctional IQ range, and perhaps the great majority of liberals fall within it. Smart enough to diverge from Instinct, not smart enough to see that this divergence is almost always a mistake.
This is why I have a low opinion of the intellects of people with verbally tilted IQs. The actual range from +1 SD to +2 SD, objectively, is not special in this way except that this happens to be where the upper middle class is located at this particular time in history.
Yes it’s the people who are smart enough to act the narrative but too dumb to understand it. It’s like when I went to see Camus’ Cross Purpose be performed in London and went to discuss the themes with the cast afterwards but they just looked at the really weird.
And then I tried speaking to the director. She was an ubermelon with eyes like saucers. She asked if I was an actor, probably to exploit my deep sense of confusion and ennui in a minor upcoming role she had available, and then just ignored me when I replied not.
Overall it was a very ironic day. And that’s my cool story.
feelsbadman.jpg
Cool story bro. You may have shown me a picture of that one, can’t remember.
I did. She was the one who could rip your soul straight out of your body with one look.
Such a dreamy babe
You should have bought her empire, she’d like that.
I have a website with23 new bookshelves for all the Lamborghinis that I don’t own.
As a member of this group, +2 with verbal concentration, I can tell you it is an annoying place to be intellectually. Smart enough to understand almost anything, with study and concentration, but well aware of the levels above needed to create the great ideas.
+2s learn about twice as much as +1s, or, learn it twice as fast, and make more connections between disparate fields. +3s and above do the same, twice as fast/as much as +2s and see connections that I don’t. Then you get into genius grade minds, who see webs of connectivity between fields that appear unrelated to anyone below them. It’s no wonder these people are often so grumpy. It takes time to spell out every little detail so we normal folks can understand.
By the way, smart rednecks are easy to find. Look in the Ag Engineering, Ag Mechanics departments of any Midwestern university. Or, shop foremen of almost any warehouse or factory.
“+2s learn about twice as much as +1s, or, learn it twice as fast, and make more connections between disparate fields.”
You know, that’s not a bad heuristic at all.
>By the way, smart rednecks are easy to find. Look in the Ag Engineering, Ag Mechanics departments of any Midwestern university. Or, shop foremen of almost any warehouse or factory.
Also good point here.
Makes sense. Don’t recall you explaining this clearly before, though.
This particular theory of mine is a complete mess ATM.
I would guess that since Mongoloids (including Mongoloid politicians) tend toward a “smart redneck” brain type, this is the reason that they are much less susceptible to political correctness and other such nonsense.
On an unrelated note, I’m going to start looking to see what the phrenological differences are between clever sillies and smart rednecks in the general population. Unfortunately, smart rednecks are hard to find in large numbers, and I’m not sure where to look to try to isolate such people for observation.
Smart redneck modified by high average neoteny (jsl appears to be an outlier on the latter).
Actually yes, that’s a consequence I hadn’t considered. Nice!
Occasionally a clever silly will cross over and be red-pilled. Then he becomes a red-pill silly. Lots of those too, let’s not forget.
It would be good to have a clear “goal image” of what to strive for. High verbal, but not in this and that way. High visual, but in this exact way. ‘Cause I believe in plasticity, and want to have something to strive for.
For, instance, it’s good to have some AH, but it needs to be cross-referenced with reality-checks a lot for proper ideas to grow and develop.
I think I have pretty high meta-cognition, this is why I think like this. Brain as an orchestra with the composer as the most important guy. Ie I can access many brain modes, question is: how do I put them together in the optimal way?
I suppose it depends what you’re optimizing.
:-)
http://theironpill.tumblr.com/
Is almost certainly based on Swedish youtuber The Golden One.
That was the best 30 minutes I’ve ever wasted :-).