Intelligence Privilege

[Celldweller]

Are we having the doctor vs garbage man debate?

Yes, finally.

Well to be honest until today I didn't realise there were people out there who thought people should be paid according to how much they contribute to public health. Even if you accepted this as a premise, you would then also need to be convinced that individual garbage collectors do more for public health than individual surgeons.

Pretty sure social workers make less than surgeons.

You know, I can burn my garbage but no-one can burn the cancer out of their body.

Burn the cancer?...nah, just pray it away.

Doctors commit suicide at four times the rate of the rest of the population. It's not because they're bummed out by the rain during their European holidays or because they're worried that the extensions on their house are taking too long, it's because they have an incredibly hard job with lots of hours and the relentless emotional energy of dealing with sick people and their families, day in and day out.

So do police officers.

-"Why, Celldweller, did you randomly quote me?"
-Because.

BTW, as someone who has worked alongside cardiovascular surgeons for the last 10 years, I'd rather send my mother to the garbage collector for a procedure than about 50% of these intellectual, surgical prodigy's.

Carry on.

 

[Metaphor]

I'd prefer to live in a city with no garbage collectors rather than no doctors.

In fact, I am quite far 'left' when it comes to strikes: if you don't have the choice to withhold your labour, then you are literally a slave. But I can't extend the same courtesy to doctors: if they went on strike and withheld their labour, I'd find that a deeply troubling, immoral decision. I would not support doctors going on strike.

I take that as a no.

II have had the "pleasure" of digging a Buick out from under the daily leaving on a brownstone.

Not fun.

And as anyone can tell you who has traveled to places with poor public sanitation, there comes a point when you can't have enough doctor to make up for lack clean air, land, and water and people die from squalor.

Sanitation worker are far more important to the running of society than people give them credit for and often not until they aren't doing their jobs do people realize how important they are.

Now this is not to say that surgeons aren't important.

they are.

But surgeons work best when the cities in which they work are clean.

Now as for who should get more than the other, that is question above my grade and pay. Although I do think sanitations workers, depending on where they work, should make more than they do and they should certainly get more respect.

I don't think I ever said anything that would imply I think the world isn't a better place with garbage being collected than without it.

And as I've said, for the people on the thread who think their garbage collector contributes more than a surgeon and therefore deserves more money, feel free to pay your garbage collector the pro-rata surgeon rate, and (try to pay) pay your surgeon a pro-rata garbage collector rate.

 

[Metaphor]

BTW, as someone who has worked alongside cardiovascular surgeons for the last 10 years, I'd rather send my mother to the garbage collector for a procedure than about 50% of these intellectual, surgical prodigy's.

Carry on.

Feel free to do that for (to) your mother, if you have her enduring power of attorney and you think that that is what she would want.

Frankly though, anti-intellectual reverse-snobbery is something I'd expect from the right, not the left. I didn't realise prodigies had fallen so far out of favour.

 

[barbos]

With all of this talk about privilege lately, let's talk about the most overwhelming type of privilege: intelligence privilege.

Think about it. Not only does every person on the entire planet regularly discriminate based on inherent intelligence, it's actually an encouraged practice. This means that people with no skills and not a lot of ability are naturally going to gravitate toward the low end of society. Lack of ability spans across all races, religions, and genders.

The obvious argument that the concept is stupid is that we're an evolutionary animal and competition is our natural state, on the opposite extreme would be some type of regulatory measures. But I think if we're going to use the concept of privilege, then speaking about intelligence privilege might be useful.

1) What does it mean to have great intelligence?
2) What responsibilities should it entail, if any?
3) Is the idea even reasonable at all?
4) How should we protect the disadvantaged? Does this relate to a welfare state?

And go.

There are different types of intelligence and unfortunately only one type actually matters - social intelligence.
The other types don't hurt but they don't really matter much most of the time.

 

[arkirk]

With all of this talk about privilege lately, let's talk about the most overwhelming type of privilege: intelligence privilege.

Think about it. Not only does every person on the entire planet regularly discriminate based on inherent intelligence, it's actually an encouraged practice. This means that people with no skills and not a lot of ability are naturally going to gravitate toward the low end of society. Lack of ability spans across all races, religions, and genders.

The obvious argument that the concept is stupid is that we're an evolutionary animal and competition is our natural state, on the opposite extreme would be some type of regulatory measures. But I think if we're going to use the concept of privilege, then speaking about intelligence privilege might be useful.

1) What does it mean to have great intelligence?
2) What responsibilities should it entail, if any?
3) Is the idea even reasonable at all?
4) How should we protect the disadvantaged? Does this relate to a welfare state?

And go.

There are different types of intelligence and unfortunately only one type actually matters - social intelligence.
The other types don't hurt but they don't really matter much most of the time.

Perhaps all the forms of intelligence need to be honored equally and doing so is "socially intelligent."

 

[dx713]

My answers to the OP and the following discussion.

1) intelligence (if there is such a global thing, not wanting to derail into this debate here) is not directly correlated to social success. It might be at the margin, I have met a few bright individuals who ascended to success. But on average, good social circles, good family support, parents who value education and exemplify/explain good organisation and studying habits (external factors), or obedience and resistance to boredom and frustration (internal factors), seem more important than intelligence as classically understood to achieve a basic education or diploma good enough to allow the smarts ones the headstart needed to success, and the not-so-smart a comfortable life.

2+3) So yes, here we have an "intelligence privilege", or rather, see my first point, an "educational and life opportunities privilege" (that, in a lot of cases, can simply be boiled down to a class privilege, even more so in countries where education costs money).
As people with this privilege will tend to gravitate towards the control of societies, it's their responsibility to ensure the protection of the less-privileged.
Actually, it should be their interest, either via empathy (helped by the off chance one of them or their kids loses the privilege), or simply, on cold calculation, because the security cost (monetary or freedom restriction or worse) of keeping the underprivileged violence at bay will end being worse than the cost of protection.
Of course, as we have seen that this privilege doesn't necessarily mean actual intelligence, the lack of empathy, the "it'll never happen to me or my kin", or the lack of understanding of the full cost analysis, seem prevalent in our world...

4) yes, your garbage man or cleaning crew can be quite intelligent, or have skills you don't have.
Their problem is that their skills are much more common or much easier to train by the employers than scientific or medical skills. So their employers can use market forces to pay them less.
But I can't fault their employers for that. Making money and competing against similar companies is the goal that our society assigns to companies, they're simply playing by our rules. And as all societies who've tried to completely do away with those basic market rules have failed so far, and I don't want my kids killed in a violent revolution, I won't advocate suddenly killing all those rules. I feel like us human still need a "reward by greater ownership of nice things" system.
So, I agree with point 4, it's up to society to protect the underpriviledged, via rules (limited ownership of common/indispensable goods, environment protection, labour rules, minimum wages) and redistribution (taxes, supports, citizen revenue if you're as a leftist as I...)
It should also be up to society to organise the education so that those who didn't show their potential during basic education can still have ways to earn access to higher education. High school grades, as noted in my point 1, don't necessarily show intelligence, and some people from disadvantaged schools have been shown to have the smarts and work ethics to become top students in college, if allowed to try for it via a separate selection that don't make them compete with high-class students, despite the initial disadvantage of a lower level basic education and general culture.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Has anyone here ever read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter?

 

[Togo]

Regarding the OP:

I don't think I 'discriminate on the basis of 'inherent' intelligence, but I'm not sure what behaviours the OP would expect that to consist of.

1) What does it mean to have great intelligence
Ability to pick up new concepts quickly, manipulate existing concepts quickly and easily, and to use this facility to come up with answers to problems that others can't.

2) What responsibilities should it entail, if any?
Same as being strong in any other area. Don't use the advantages it gives you, social or otherwise, to exploit others or cause them unnecessary harm.

3) Is the idea even reasonable at all?
Not entirely, no. Much of what people tend to label 'intelligence' is intellectualism, a social set of conventions and practices, rather than an ability. And people who are intelligent don't tend to be good at all types of concepts. The ivory tower academic who can't manage social interaction is the obvious stereotype, but there are plenty of others.

4) How should we protect the disadvantaged? Does this relate to a welfare state?
Make sure they have access to expert advice. This is something we already do in any case, since society is sufficiently specialised that people no, matter what their intelligence, are likely to be able to navigate every aspect of modern life without some assistance from specialists - see government functions, postal systems, computer systems, long distance calling plans, retirement details, the legal system, taxation, and so on. Intelligent people benefit less from this advice on average, because they can work more things out themselves, but everyone needs it to be available.

 

[bigfield]

1) What does it mean to have great intelligence?

It means the ability to solve problems that the average person cannot. The problems can be creative, social, logical, technical etc.

2) What responsibilities should it entail, if any?

The responsibility not to act immorally, even though one has greater opportunities to do so than the average person.

3) Is the idea even reasonable at all?

Sure.

4) How should we protect the disadvantaged? Does this relate to a welfare state?

People of lower intelligence do jobs that are undesirable to higher intelligence people. They should receive a fair reward for their work and their workload should be reasonable, even if they are easily replaced.

Employers should be prevented from manipulating them into accepting poverty-level wages. Just because someone is lower in intelligence doesn;t mean that they deserve to be screwed over.

Consumer product manufacturers should be prevented from manipulating them through advertising. The world's economy is distorted because too many people buy consumer products that were only bought to fulfil a desire created by advertisers, when instead they could be spending more on more useful products, thus changing the way society develops technologically and economically.

 

[bigfield]

Has anyone here ever read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter?

Let me help you with that.

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL5882652M/Anti-intellectualism_in_American_life./borrow