IQ and voting

Yeah he got dunked on by Ken Jennings.

http://ken-jennings.com/blog/archives/287

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Look, there are only two noteworthy (yet still flawed) tests capable of attempting a measurement of some sort of grand unified theory of generalized intelligence. These are:

  1. Raven’s Progressive Matrices
  2. Good At PowerPoint
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When I first started coding I didn’t really fully grasp the concept of booleans. The first program I wrote in C# contained a bunch of statements like “if (someVar == true)”

How have I never seen this holy shit that’s amazing

Spent 3 minutes on it and no clue. Must be my low IQ

no but i am dum as fuk

also pony dum

Lol no. Its High Performing Asshole. This is of course not a term used by Harvard Business Review, but the concept is pretty widely understood now. Most formal performance metrics encourage a lot of bad behavior. There is some benefit to identifying people that hit their targets but do it by bullying, cutting corners, etc. Obviously assholes have a structural advantage in large companies but there has been a shift in the last 10 years to try to limit their influence.

Just gonna leave this here.

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Lol sometimes I do this in python if the variable has a really shifty name and I want to make extra sure it’s readable and/or to be clear that it’s expected to be a boolean (yay duck typing).

Of course if it was just named “has_x” it wouldn’t feel as necessary to me. But I am aware I probably look like a noob when I do it. I’m all about readability though, I frequently will spend 5-10 lines to do something that could probably be written in 2-3 with clever code.

Sorry for derail. Not all programmers are smart, either, believe me on that one.

Knowing the syntax of a programming language makes one a programmer about as much as being an English speaker makes one a poet.

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I never saw that. That’s amazing.

High Performing Assholes?

ETA didn’t cheat

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I don’t know where people got this idea that there are smart Trump supporters. That’s a pretty rare breed. For every Peter Thiel there are 20 normal smart people who hate Trump.

Generally speaking, Sklansky’s problem isn’t that he lacks smarts, it’s that he’s uneducated.

For 30 years I’ve tried to think of some viable, not democracy-killing approach to limiting voting to the informed, empathetic, intelligent, or whatever. I’ve never been able to come up with one, because even if they work (something like “college grad” would be a viable proxy, though obviously both over and under inclusive for the target group), they remove the “all in this together” aspect of society that is fundamental to mutual trust and cooperation, basic respect, and legitimacy. Democracy isn’t about finding the best form of government, it’s about having a legitimate form of government. A legitimate government chosen by not so bright people is preferable to a suspect government that reflects the current consensus of the well informed.

That said, I think the collision of stupidity and power reflected in things like the Trump (or Bush) administration and their supporters and enables is unsustainable in a high tech world where mistakens can have major consequences for the health and well being of everyone. I would expect that within 100 years people will be a good deal smarter because of designer babies and likely widespread biological enhancement. Hell, reduced air pollution and lead in the environment (at least in the US) is probably significant increasing average intelligence.

So, in my fantasy, we just need to hang with the morons for 100 years or so. After that it will be smart people who find a way to spread misery and destroy things, but they will at least do it with some style.

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I used to go on thedailywtf.com every day back in like 2008, haha. The days of slashdot, Fark and digg. Haven’t been on it in so long.

Yeah, same here, also haven’t been on it for a few years. Speaking of booleans, remember this one? Classic.

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I’m not going to read this thread other than to say that it is peak Sklansky that he thinks it is ok to have sex with mentally disabled people but doesn’t think they should have the right to vote.

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As I was reading this, the exact problem I have with what you’re saying (not that I disagree at all) is that the time scale involved in this process far exceeds our lifetimes, or maybe even the lifetime of a viable life sustaining planet. In fact, the collision of stupidity and power and its current manifestation may end up being so potent and destructive, that the world may not survive, at least in any recognizable form.

I’m aware the accelerationists believe on some level that this is a good thing, but the amount of human (and ecological) suffering involved will be so profound that I have a difficult time believing anyone who subscribes to that ethos is not a complete sociopath.

Basically, I believe we need to do something drastic to stop the stupidity RIGHT NOW. I don’t know what it is though. Definitely not by limiting voting rights. Maybe by investing in better education, but it seems we as a nation have long jumped off that wagon. Simply letting this play out and destroy itself does not seem like an option to me.

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Well, it takes one to know one.

@BestOf

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