IQ and Self Knowledge?

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Is IQ the single most important factor in determining what you should expect from yourself and others?

 

The most common predictor how someone will behave towards me is whether they are high or low in IQ. I don't even think there is such a thing as self knowledge for people below a certain IQ, and therefore I think self knowledge is actually only a benefit of IQ. Self knowledge is problem solving. What one considers a solution is fundamentally a moral choice. I think the relation of choice and IQ is significant, since higher IQ people will perceive more potential solutions to problems, but it is not the determining factor in which solution they will chose. We see people with high IQs makes terrible choices, and we see people with low IQs to make wonderful choices.

 

I know trauma plays a huge role, but I personally endured a lot of trauma without being completely turned into what my abusers were. I think my IQ and my moral choices had a lot to do with this. Trauma may in fact be a better predictor than IQ, but I guess I'm not sure. One thing that bothers me about society is how we have to ignore the differences between people in matters of intelligence. I think this is really unfair to higher IQ people, who then develop a sort of slave morality in response to their subjugation. Obviously it benefits lower IQ people if higher IQ people perceive them as more capable than they actually are. For instance, high IQ people think low IQ people can go on welfare for the short term, and then get off for the sake of not developing an addiction to free stuff. But the fact is the low IQ person will have a very hard time getting off welfare since they experience difficulty controlling impulses and deferring satisfaction in the present, for a long term goal. The low IQ person thinks they are better off on welfare, but that's only because they don't understand the possibility of a better alternative involving the deferring of gratification. So in this instance, since both high and low IQ people are lying to one another about their understanding of one another's capacity to solve problems, they both are made worse off in general. The high IQ people waste precious capital, and the low IQ people drown their ambition in free stuff.

 

Sorry for such a hard break to end this post, but overall I think self knowledge begins with first understanding what you are capable of, and also what others are capable of towards you. If you do not understand that first, I think moving forward in pursuit of solutions when you don't acknowledge your or others' capacity to solve problems cannot reasonably be called the practice of self knowledge, since you would be ignoring a fundamental staple of your and their personality

 

Is my point esoteric to follow, or am I perhaps pointing out something crucial here? Thanks for reading.

[csekavec]

I've often thought along those lines. 

 

It's a chicken and egg thing... is it IQ that causes self knowledge or does self knowledge lead to good IQ? Whatever it is, this X factor, it is the desirable quality. 

[Matthew Ed Moran]

I've often thought along those lines. 

 

It's a chicken and egg thing... is it IQ that causes self knowledge or does self knowledge lead to good IQ? Whatever it is, this X factor, it is the desirable quality. 

 

I think I edited a bit more into my post after you wrote your response. I think IQ must lead to self knowledge in general, but I could be wrong. I think high IQ people who don't have any self knowledge are false positives, likely due to severe trauma. I just speculate that since they are smart, and since they aren't admitting how smart they are to themselves, that they provide themselves excuses to do immoral things for short term benefit. Doing this over and over will lead one further from self knowledge, but it does not mean they didn't have the ability to turn inwards and understand themselves with the same intelligence they understand the outside world. For instance, my mother had a relatively high IQ for a woman, yet she was very abusive. I think the fact that I perceived so strongly to try and pretend she didn't understand what she was doing effected my perception of intelligence. It was simply too painful to consider that my mother could perceive solutions to her problems which didn't involve impulsive anger towards me. But if she was as high IQ as I said, and she was not a false positive, then the truth would be something more like that she did perceive alternatives on occasions, but she chose not to pursue them. 

[Mister Mister]

  I've heard Stef use the metaphor of IQ relating to horsepower in a car, and philosophy as the ability to drive.  If you have a fast car, but are a shitty driver, or have the wrong directions, you're in a much worse position than if you have an average car but know where you are going and how to get there.  Having philosophy and self-knowledge gives you a huge advantage in this world I think, in some ways more than IQ.  I think of all the really smart people who lost themselves in alchemy, or figuring out epicycles in the Ptolemaic system, or debating whether Adam had a belly-button, vs. the person of average intelligence today, who has a much better understanding of science.  Similarly, so many smart people are lost in academia, either dwelling in useless mundane details and abstractions, or worse, immersed in relativist and Marxist delusions and propaganda.  It takes a real luminary genius/hero like Galileo, Newton, Ayn Rand or Mises or Rothbard, to blaze new trails, but once they have done so, anyone of reasonable intelligence can get where they got to, and further.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Thanks for the replies, guys. You're right about how geniuses blaze new trails for all of us, Rose. I wonder where I would be if I didn't hear the arguments from Stefan when I did about philosophy and self knowledge. I didn't fully understand them immediately, and even in school I was attracted to Existentialist philosophy. It makes me wonder how much more I would have pursued a 'discipline' like that if I didn't already hear Stefan's arguments prior. In my experience, Existentialist philosophy was pretty dangerous in how removed from self knowledge and logic that it was. Guys like Sarte were a complete mess in their personal lives, yet I wasn't told that in school. I was told he was this ground breaking philosopher with original ideas. I thought it was very deceptive how a philosopher can be passed off as profound to students, while not revealing that his personal life was a complete mess and waste and tragedy. It is such a misleading picture for a young person like me, without a father who was looking for guidance and truth, and philosophers to model myself after. I feel disdain for my teacher now, the feminist marxist that he was for not being more open about the dangers these so-called philosophers found themselves in personally. 

 

I am so thankful for hearing arguments about self knowledge because without it I worry what my intellect what have done with all the trauma I had. 

[Quadrewple]

If you have a fast car, but are a shitty driver, or have the wrong directions, you're in a much worse position than if you have an average car but know where you are going and how to get there.

 

Great point.  I was also thinking that if someone with a high IQ is punished for the effects of self-knowledge then they may be even more averse to self-knowledge than someone who with a lower IQ exposed to the same environment.

[csekavec]

Not all chickens lay eggs; not all eggs become chickens.

 

A person with great intellect might have capacity for self knowledge and never turn their reason upon anything besides their chosen specialty. A person with naturally high self awareness might never make those ideas concrete in their behavior in the world. 

 

False positive seems like a great way to label it.  But I cannot say this strongly enough: every person has the capacity to lead ethical life according to their self knowledge and guided by their intellect. Even the dumbest (non disabled) human has brain power sufficient for this. 

 

When you wrote how it was too painful to consider... I have felt that. Granting our abusers full self responsibility hurts us. 

[Mister Mister]

Great point.  I was also thinking that if someone with a high IQ is punished for the effects of self-knowledge then they may be even more averse to self-knowledge than someone who with a lower IQ exposed to the same environment.

 

  What do you mean punished for the effects of SK?

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Maybe he meant punished for the effects of intelligence. Intelligent children have to be put down hard when they rebel because the parent understands how wrong and unjustified the situation is,  and they know the child sees how wrong and unjustified the situation is, so they must rely on significant escalations of abuse at times to put the child down. That is  what I experienced; I had a very significant temper at an early age.

 

Oh by the way I think this would actually be present specifically if the parent has a lower IQ than the child. I know all children put up a fight, and in fact I think how they are responded to decides exactly what path their anger will be carved into. I think it is a profound insight to notice how different the type of conflicts we see today, with single mothers and arguably a matriarchy, with how anger and the most murderous of intentions can be expressed through verbal manipulation (not including overt threats - but something like 'climate change' is advocating literally neglecting the lives of millions of people), and notice that it is something kind of particular to high IQ people (by high IQ I basically just mean 105+, but I think criminality peaks around 80 which would be the opposite spectrum of the kind of verbal assault I am talking about).

[Quadrewple]

  What do you mean punished for the effects of SK?

 

I meant that if a child is in a terrible environment and is essentially serving a prison sentence under their parents, to acknowledge the effect their parents are having on them would potentially be unbearable or lead to the child doing something which would get them in trouble like fighting back against the parents.  Even if the acknowledgement was kept private (which it usually is), I know in my case it was easier to just not even think about it than risk living an even more double life than I was already forced to.

 

I'm not sure if I phrased that in the most accurate way originally, but that's what I meant.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

  I've heard Stef use the metaphor of IQ relating to horsepower in a car, and philosophy as the ability to drive.  If you have a fast car, but are a shitty driver, or have the wrong directions, you're in a much worse position than if you have an average car but know where you are going and how to get there.  Having philosophy and self-knowledge gives you a huge advantage in this world I think, in some ways more than IQ.  I think of all the really smart people who lost themselves in alchemy, or figuring out epicycles in the Ptolemaic system, or debating whether Adam had a belly-button, vs. the person of average intelligence today, who has a much better understanding of science.  Similarly, so many smart people are lost in academia, either dwelling in useless mundane details and abstractions, or worse, immersed in relativist and Marxist delusions and propaganda.  It takes a real luminary genius/hero like Galileo, Newton, Ayn Rand or Mises or Rothbard, to blaze new trails, but once they have done so, anyone of reasonable intelligence can get where they got to, and further.

I heard him make that analogy and I still like it.

 

I also think you could analogize the high intelligence people you talk about as sort of drivers who never make it off the test track. They have this magnificent car, but they won't even take it on the real road. Instead they are satisfied to stay on the test track with a small group of their delusional buddies, complementing each other on how amazing they are at drifting on the test track, going at high speeds, doing donuts. But they never make it off course. They stay on their cozy little test track, going in circles, doing the same things over and over; and yet they think of themselves as some amazing drivers who are making real impact on the world.

 

Where as people with self knowledge go beyond the test track, and they take their intelligence to a place which is new, uncomfortable, and when they take risks in this new environment it is actually scary. They use their driving to try new things which they can't anticipate at first what the outcome will be, they learn from it, and then they take on new more daring risks. They are courageous.  The test track drivers are just cowards who are delusion-ally patting each other on the back for going in circles; when they hear of some guy doing new things outside the track, they get pissed off that someone notices what cowards they are for never leaving the test track where they are comfortable. They say, 'no, you're not supposed to be doing that! You're not actually driving the right way! The only real driving is here on the test track! It is sacrilegious to bring your drivings skills and performance towards outside of the test track which include new possibilities of risk and failure. You should just stay here on the track, and since you're not here on the test track which I have never left for 20 years, you're obviously just afraid of me and my 'driving skills,' and you're probably just lying about what you're doing out there anyway!

 

I think what I am trying to say is some high IQ people are HUUUGE cowards.