Reading this discussion makes me realise I don’t have a very good mental model for what a low IQ person’s internal processing is like. Most of the behaviours i tend to associate with stupidity in real life are related to rationality (e.g. excessive compartmentalisation, failure to take arguments to their logical conclusion) rather than a lack of processing power or speed.
David Ogilvy) was a highly successful advertising executive, often called “The Father of Advertising” and he created several iconic advertising campaigns. However, his IQ was very average:
Including intelligence, said he. They both took an IQ test he found in the back of a book. He got a 96 (“par for ditch diggers”), and she (his wife, Herta Lans) got 136. It changed their relationship. “Suddenly she’s pretty and clever and I’m ugly and dumb.”
failure to take arguments to their logical conclusion
Informal arguments often rely on perceived lack of alternatives to arrive at the conclusions, and thus even if you don’t have any alternatives you can’t trust it.
E.g. “we both seen blerg, and the only way blerg could happen is because of blurp, and therefore, blurp must have happened”, that’s only as trustworthy as your enumeration of the ways blerg could happen is complete, which is usually not at all.
Frequently, otherwise smart (i.e. high IQ individuals), especially those with little training in formal proofs, keep insisting that unless you come up with an alternative cause for blerg, you must believe in blurp, and get rather pissed off at the insolence of being dubious about the blurp without providing an alternative cause for the blerg. (Then when you provide an alternative cause they go on how the blurp must have a probability of ~50%)
Reading this discussion makes me realise I don’t have a very good mental model for what a low IQ person’s internal processing is like. Most of the behaviours i tend to associate with stupidity in real life are related to rationality (e.g. excessive compartmentalisation, failure to take arguments to their logical conclusion) rather than a lack of processing power or speed.
David Ogilvy) was a highly successful advertising executive, often called “The Father of Advertising” and he created several iconic advertising campaigns. However, his IQ was very average:
source: The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising
So if you’re actually interested, you could look into his life.
Informal arguments often rely on perceived lack of alternatives to arrive at the conclusions, and thus even if you don’t have any alternatives you can’t trust it.
E.g. “we both seen blerg, and the only way blerg could happen is because of blurp, and therefore, blurp must have happened”, that’s only as trustworthy as your enumeration of the ways blerg could happen is complete, which is usually not at all.
Frequently, otherwise smart (i.e. high IQ individuals), especially those with little training in formal proofs, keep insisting that unless you come up with an alternative cause for blerg, you must believe in blurp, and get rather pissed off at the insolence of being dubious about the blurp without providing an alternative cause for the blerg. (Then when you provide an alternative cause they go on how the blurp must have a probability of ~50%)