You’re right on a personal level. On the social level, I lean in lsusr’s direction. Given the apparent utility of IQ as a measure of aptitude, we could be testing everybody and using those results to help people find careers that are good fits for them. The fact that we don’t is at least suggestive of a massive social taboo, which is the cause of the lack of information on the part of individuals that necessitates vagueness.
This would predict that we are good at finding precise information in less sensitive areas, which I don’t think we are. Rather, people don’t know how to create high-quality precise information, so in most areas discourse gets clogged with junk information, and in some sensitive areas we acknowledge the information is bad and therefore try to not assert much.
You’re right on a personal level. On the social level, I lean in lsusr’s direction. Given the apparent utility of IQ as a measure of aptitude, we could be testing everybody and using those results to help people find careers that are good fits for them. The fact that we don’t is at least suggestive of a massive social taboo, which is the cause of the lack of information on the part of individuals that necessitates vagueness.
Taboo → lack of information → vagueness.
This would predict that we are good at finding precise information in less sensitive areas, which I don’t think we are. Rather, people don’t know how to create high-quality precise information, so in most areas discourse gets clogged with junk information, and in some sensitive areas we acknowledge the information is bad and therefore try to not assert much.