My post on Vaccines and the Midwit Effect has now attracted a great deal of commentary, and no few objections. I want to address some of these here, and expand on a few points. Most of the critique relates to intelligence and IQ. No few valued commenters doubt that intelligence is a coherent or measurable concept, or that it is explanatory in this case, or that it is more explanatory than other social or personality factors.
I am still holding on to a person's employment being the key driver in vaccine uptake. Big corps, big institutions (academic, religious, military), or "high hierarchical", will be the biggest single explanatory factor amongst the vaccinated, and conversely those employed in menial, small organizations, or self-employed or "low hierarchical" will be at the lower vaccinated level. A person's job environment during the vaxx madness was the 'big bat in the room'. Sadly, this means that society will become dumber as the smart folk die prematurely, and breed less in the interim. Dark Times.
Agreed.. But that doesn't distinguish those who merely submitted to economic coercion from those who complied docilely or even gladly.
fwiw, I for one don't bemoan the probable reduction in above-average bright people. A mob of people thinking they're smarter than those they deem less intelligent, is a highly vicious mob.
Intelligence is highly overrated. Pandora's Box and the Garden of Eden myths agree.
I long for the day - that may never come - when the value of those in “dumb” professions is recognized. One competent plumber likely does more good in the world than ten university professors.
In my age group, I am 72, many took the vax to travel, especially to visit children, even against their better judgement. I have no clue of my IQ, I know I am considered a little above average by people I worked with. The strange thing is that all my family that submitted so willingly, all professional people, consider me and my children very unintelligent. Funny as both my sons have done very well academically and are both above average intelligence even if I have to say so myself. I have given up with these people.
"I for one don't bemoan the probable reduction in above-average bright people. A mob of people thinking they're smarter than those they deem less intelligent, is a highly vicious mob."
Amen to that. 2021-2022 was insufferable in my little corner of the world in NJ. The smug derision and open mocking of "do your own research" was unbearable. It was enough to nearly extinguish my ability to feel pity.
No, not at all. There was a push to mandate it in healthcare but did not go anywhere. Swedes got an EU conforming vaccine passport for travel purposes only. There was also a move to require it for large gatherings in late 2021 but it failed. It happened after Tegnell resigned and they also got a new female PM. It was an all female crew at that point and they were looking to copy restrictions in other countries but did not materialize.
Scandinavia has a tradition that vaccines are voluntary but has very large conformity for childhood vaccines. No mandates like in the US for schools.
I should add that it would be illegal in Sweden for a company to mandate it. This would have to be implemented by the State via an act in parliament and there might be some constitutional issues.
Well the US approach was to mandate the companies to mandate it via OSHA. Fortunately, the courts put a stop to it. I think Sweden, despite being quite socialist, still respects individual rights.
Also socialist Sweden has full school choice via vouchers and privatized social security! So maybe the US is more socialist. Kind of an ugly national socialism. (No not hat word! Nazis, they are, damn it.)
In last nights news ,the sickness Kommissar ,also known as the Provincial Health minister of the province of British Columbia announced that all the virus prevention measures of the recent pandemic will be reinstated shortly .That is masks, social distance mandated injections in all public locations ,especially in medical settings .
Please tell me this isn't true. Currently in México and will not come home if Henry is allowed by the population to run amok again. It's like the sea air has infected British Columbian's brains with something that she is listened to at all. Who ever believed the vaccinated needed to be protected from the unjabbed?!?! Absolutely crazy but almost everyone listened. More tequila needed 🤪
Yes what I wrote about yesterday was again broadcast on the news .The reinstatement of medical terror in British Columbia .The witch Bonny Henry is behind the never ending virus hunt . In that hunt we are really the game animals for that beast of a female . If I had the power I would send her on the spot to her whyruss heaven
They also said on the news ,that guards will be at hospital entrance to make sure the commands are followed . I.m scared to look what will happen at grocery stores .I see some young people jogging fully masked below my window . I feel so mentally tortured by now that I think of suicide more often now .
So far, just masking in medical settings. No reason to think she'll stop at that, of course. As long as BC residents go along with it, she'll continue to increase restrictions.
I'm glad I got a chance to travel there in the mid-90s before the immigration disaster that came later. Among the many novel sights I saw were that Norwegian moms could leave the baby carriage unattended on the walk in front of the store while they shopped. That'd be unthinkable in the US. I'd be very surprised if they can do that thirty years later.
For nearly 20 years was "pen pal" with a Swedish woman. Around 2016 I commented something to the effect "I'm dismayed to read what uncontrolled immigration has done to your country." She never wrote back. I guess I hit a nerve.
(This article sucks--see the last paragraph: "Get Vaccinated!", but I link it because it's not behind a paywall, as the LA Times and Daily News articles are.)
The City of Los Angeles employee vax mandate is STILL in effect (about 50K employees, new hires, volunteers).
Yes, indeed. Interesting that the Vaccinators were confident that all judges in the country would back up the Vax Push and mandates across the board and squash any challenges, and that's turning out to not be so reliable.
Not necessarily, if an attorney would take a case pro bono. Or for contingency fees. 30% or more of a large judgment will buy a lot of BMWs, private school tuition, a bigger place at the Hamptons, or make paying support to that bitch, the Ex easier. I suspect a lot of legal firms shy away from such cases because of the potential threat to the firm or individual attorney's future business prospects.
Interestingly, last year my home required a large plumbing job. This involved 2 1/2 months of work by several plumbers. Virtually, none of them had taken the vaccine, and while most of them were intelligent enough, I would not suppose they were more than average IQ. What, impressed me, in discussing the subject with them, was their willingness to question the authorities position on the subject, and to “do their own research” for their own decision. It seems to me that this was more “intelligent” than the average doctor’s or lawyer’s view.
I believe that there is more than one kind of intelligence, and perhaps if the professional classes breed less, it may not be as bad as you think. Let’s hope so, anyway.
During 2020 and 2021 we lived and worked on a farm (more admin work) No one there gave masks, social distancing or the vax even a moments thought and nobody got ill, all fit as a fiddle!
One explanation for this effect, that manual workers & tradesmen (& women) are less likely than “the intelligentsia” to get jabbed is real world vs virtual world views.
Those no longer ever exposed to real, physical danger are instead using an internal, or “virtual”, model of reality. They’re constitutionally unlikely to “do their own research” and more likely to believe official lies. Conformity & acceptance is very important to them and is professionally necessary.
Because of the foregoing, they won’t believe any of the stories that show officials as being ruthless beasts. They are members of a group who a psychologist, I believe, described as “Some people would prefer to die with the herd than to leave the herd”.
By contrast, there are men who work with their hands, using power tools, working at height or with high voltages, deal with hazardous chemicals, explosive gases, who load & unload heavy machinery, who drive heavy goods vehicles etc etc.
These people are used to assessing real risks, well aware that if they get it wrong, at best it will impoverish them If they won’t work in response to new non-existent threats, they’ll lose money and fail.
If on the other hand, they misjudge a real risk, they may get injured or even killed.
So this cohort will initially pay attention to what we’re all told about “the scary virus”, soon realise that, whatever else is going on, the scary virus risk thing eas, at very least, being exaggerated.
So very early on, the manual trades were less likely to be jabbed. Furthermore, in the 9 months between the official start of the non-existent crisis, this same cohort on average parted ways from the isolated professional cohorts.
Because the manual workers realised there was no unusual risk, why would they want to be vaccinated against a non-existent risk? And it’s a new product, this “vaccine”, so by definition, assurances of safety were fraudulent.
Not to say that all professionals got jabbed & non of the tradesmen did.
“It’s a trend, that’s all”: yes. I think there’s something to your theory, but like all theories, it doesn’t apply all the time. In general, more of the tradesmen I speak to have less “automatic” conformity with authority (and often more common-sense views, which are obviously non-woke). But I can think of a couple who are truly “textbook woke”, probably based on too much uncritical consumption of MSM. Still, I think the theory is valid.
I consider it spot on Mike. It has been my observation too. I was a building surveyor and had to assess risks. I knew the tradesmen were by and large good sorts who knew more than me on their individual trades. I think one might use the word 'canny' when it came to the COVID 19 nonsense.
As I stopped working in late 2020 due my firm's stupidity over coronavirus 'rules' they introduced believing the government guidance was compulsory and ignoring existing health & safety legislation I have no idea whether my colleagues got vaccinated in the end or not.
Given some at least believe the foolishness maybe they did in the end.
looking at USA data - this is Ed Dowd's thesis: it was detrimental to your health to be employed in the USA in 2021 - highlighting a temporal correlation btw an increase in non covid related deaths + work hours missed + initiation of an increase in disability claims and increasing coercive rhetoric then the 'if your at an employer of more than 100 you must compel vaccination among your workforce ' exec order from the biden admin through OSHA.
dowd recently went on dr drew's show again in which dr drew- to his credit- brought on a viewer to challenge dowd's assertion. the viewer/caller cited sweedish data saying they have lower excess mortality (which one would expect after a pandemic killed the weakest amongst the herd), but dowd countered stating while in 21 sweden saw lower excess mortality, more recent data from '22 is showing growing excess mortality.
A huge factor for sure. But I was also surprised at how many people that I spoke with who were all in on “the government is insanely evil, this whole thing is a scam” and yet inexplicably still rolled up the sleeve.
Another aspect is the conditioning of higher education to regurgitate what is fed. Most universities and professors do not want questioning students. Many with higher education who willingly were jabbed are conditioned to not question. The study is describing those with higher educations have a higher intelligence. The accurate way would to test the hypothesis is an intelligence test of some sort on every adult and add vaccination status. Or devise a test to see why some questioned and some didn’t.
Sounds reasonable. Other factors were important too. Example, I didn't want the vax, but I did want to travel cross-border, and I didn't want to defer that travel for two years. So I got the vax, betting that the really bad side effects would be rare enough that I wouldn't be affected. So far, so good.
I appreciate your point of view. I sometimes look back at my choice as frivolous. If I end up with some long term negative health effects, then that judgement will be clear.
I also hope you have not long term effects. My one niece is a teacher and had to take the vax in 2021 and only now ended up with an emergency Caesar and blood clots!
I will pray for her. How many of us who took the vax will later develop clots? It is a fair question. If I get them, there is no doubt I will feel foolish because, unlike your niece, I wasn't forced to get vaxed to keep my job. Clots were in the back of my mind when on the airplane from Denver to Munich on September 16th, flying in high altitude - always a risk of an embolism on a long flight like that. Again, praying for your niece.
Thanks. In fact I just had my annual "executive physical" at the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday. No sign of any heart issues, thankfully, as I am just now turning 60 years old.
A very accurate analysis...Mid-wits dominate our society, and they tend to promote people a bit less intelligent than themselves to protect their positions in organizations..Those people then promote even less intelligent people, etc..As one of the accursed who scores in the 99.99th percentile, I feel blessed that I have a wife, kids and some friends who will put up with me! But my very sound arguments against the death-vax were met with blank incomprehension by many of our friends and relatives....In my next life, I want to be a high mid-wit, Please!
Sep 28, 2023·edited Sep 28, 2023Liked by eugyppius
Yes being more attractive and less intelligent is probably the best trade off. Not smart enough to know that looks fade and that you’re getting lied to might help as well. Sad but true. Lol.
The problem with this trend, as outlined by El Gato Malo is that these people tend to be "true believers." And who is more believable, the intelligent grifter who knows he is grifting, or one of the recruits who is "all in" on whatever narrative they were hired in on?
Well, I certainly didn't object to your first post, Eugyppius. In fact, I've long had my own pet name for a similar phenomenon. I called it "The Dunning-Kruger effect of the second order." The first-order Dunning-Kruger effect is the well-known phenomenon of very dim people not understanding how much dimmer they are then average, because they can't. The second-order Dunning-Kruger effect is the midwits, the 110 IQ people, being so complacent and arrogant with being a little bit smarter than average, that they cannot comprehend just how far short they fall of real genius.
I have also many times had recourse to the following explanation: It's more easy to bamboozle a midwit than an average wit or a genius, especially if you flatter his intellect. If you tell the midwit some cock-and-bull story and tell him that the cool kids all believe it, he will devote his intellectual energy not to questioning the story but to thinking up remotely plausible scenarios under which it might be true, so that he can maintain the fission of feeling smart and special. Average people don't do this and geniuses won't do it. Only the midwits are that gullible.
Your "2nd-order Dunning-Kruger Effect" has, by my reckoning, a shorter synonym: "smugnorance", which was coined in the late 2010s.
The dim-witted generally don't care enough to rise to smugness, since they have more to lose than gain by trying to cultivate an image of high intelligence. Smugnorance is the preserve, instead, of conformist midwits. The weaponization of "flat-earth theory" is the touchstone of smugnorance, where it is used to close off any possibility of debate. We were told, for instance that only someone on the level of a flat-earther could question the rigorously scientific conduct of company Pf., or doubt that this company's concoctions were anything other than safe and effective. Never mind that the same company had been fined several billions of dollars for fraud, including the bribing of members of the medical profession. To the smugnorant, there cannot even be prima facie grounds for suspicion that such fraudulent actors might be very anxious to gain multi-billion dollar government contracts, but not at all anxious about the effects of their concoctions, since they had demanded that the contracts include indemnity.
Your definition of ["first order"] Dunning-Kruger is wrong. But don't feel bad; it's the popular misconception. The popular version isn't totally wrong, but it's an over-simplification.
The more correct version is that a person tends to over-estimate his competence in one specific area. Note that this says nothing about the person’s average intelligence, only that in one particular specialty his self-assessment of his competence is likely inflated.
The popular definition goes wrong by assuming that a dumbfuck over-estimates his general abilities.
I was trying to equate DK with the religious sin of Pride. But no; pride is a positive emotion felt as a result of one's achievement. Therefore it could be "true" pride (you really did accomplsih something) or false pride (you deluded yourself.) Clearly the latter aligns more with DK, but what about the distinction between general/specific? I don't think it exists with pride (I could be proud of everything, or just one thing) but it matters with DK.
To give you a personal example: I'm well into the midwit range (IQ slightly above average, but I don't know exact figure) yet I've botched many things in my life, surely at least some of those because I was overconfident. That's precisely what Dunning-Kruger is saying.
I believe there is a stupidity quotient that runs alongside I.Q. Some high I.Q people can be incredibly stupid while some low I.Q people can be very wise. Stupidity is no respecter of intelligence.
Common sense, street smarts, rational thought are more intelligent than IQ in my opinion. When the shit hits the fan I’d sure as hell rather have a plumber than a dumb ass lawyer (I work in a law office & yeah, all the lawyers got vax’d & we support staff all refused)
A plumber might be much more handy in a post zombie apocalypse environment than a lawyer...at least I know who I'd throw to the zombies to slow them down, and it ain't the plumber...
Since there will be no rule of law in a zombie apocalypse anyway, I’d much rather have the guy that can rig up a working toilet when the grid goes down 😅
Same environment here, though -bless me- working from home! Asked him if he didn’t smell a rat? Nah… he said he never read up on all the vax stuff, just assumed it to be ok. I am no genius at around 130, but i am curious and non-conformist by nature. And I could tell early on this was not about a “pandemic”. As a kid my favorite word was “why”.
One of the lawyers actually had the audacity / stupidity to tell us the governor’s illegal mask mandate was “the law”, in addition to believing very safe, Nobel prize winning Ivermectin was poison. When the office tried to make us wear masks, we all refused. So for several weeks the lawyers were wearing them & we were not, until they probably started to feel as stupid as they looked, & finally dropped the sanctimonious pretense.
If you really want a laugh, after this dope told us it was “the law”, my bestie in the office (we’re both paralegals) piped up that there was more bacteria on his mask than the crack of his ass. We all burst out laughing & he just stood there, DUMBfounded because he’s dumb 😂
I have zero discipline to work from home so I admire you! Surprised you still can tho, now that the scam was declared official over by pedo Joe earlier this year.
No sense of humor that guy! But then the young eager beaver lawyer has little humor I find. Also not in my office. All sucking up in the rat race which probably explains why the mask has less germs than the crack of his ass. I am not from the u.s.a. so old Joe is not calling my shots😉. I’m from Europe and my work is mostly translation and editing, both of which go best from home. Been doing this for 17 years now. Best thing that happened!
This really hits close to home. As defined by the IQ test I am one of those super intelligent people. Since my early teenage years nonconformity has been a central feature in my life causing continual turbulence for my family and myself. I walked away, at a very young age, from opportunities that most can only dream about but which I did not value. I confounded everyone in my sphere.
Frankly, I’ve scratched my head over and over again through the years wondering how seemingly intelligent people could be so dumb. The subsequent decades of a long life have put more and more distance between me and the world into which I was born. Outside of family and friends there is no place in that culture I rejected where I fit in. (I’d like to think I’m a better person for it.)
Your analysis, Sir Eugypius, rings true (from the point of view of one member of one cohort now reporting in). You’ve given me more clarity on the subject and I thank you.
Bohm's "On Dialog" explains why I hardly bother anymore with online discourse these days, and mostly avoid argumentation.
His "On Thought as a System" explains why I believe it's pointless to expect humanity to do anything but complete its self-obliteration along with much of the ecosphere.
I see no arrogance in insisting on being true to oneself. That is genuine pride, which is neither elitist nor subservient but merely the honoring of the fact of being what/whom-ever one is. Arrogance, boastfulness, braggadocio come from insecurity.
I see much more arrogance in all the remarks about how stupid others are. Compared to what? I met a guy a few years ago who ran rings around me in terms of brain power. I know a few people locally who are intelligent enough to hold their own with me and, more impressively, seek wisdom... which for me is the true definition of genius. That said, being an IQ genius can force one to become a wisdom genius.
Quote:
genius (n.)
late 14c., "tutelary or moral spirit" who guides and governs an individual through life, from Latin genius "guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth; spirit, incarnation; wit, talent;" also "prophetic skill; the male spirit of a gens," originally "generative power" (or "inborn nature"), from PIE *gen(e)-yo-, from root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.
The sense of "characteristic disposition" of a person is from 1580s. The meaning "person of natural intelligence or talent" and that of "exalted natural mental ability, skill in the synthesis of knowledge derived from perception" are attested by 1640s.
also from late 14c.
I don't know if I have a guardian angel tutelary spirit but I like the idea of a eudemonic demon.
I can’t say that I disagree with you but it looks like I come from a different point of you. I’m struggling for words, but my first thought is that I’m more of a fundamentalist ... meaning I tend to start with first principles pre-context. Back to the subject at hand I would say that the best of human nature is anything that leads to self-actualization, and the worst is anything that leads away from it.
Yeah. Now I live at the end of the dirt road with the beavers and ravens and the big garden and no cell signal and hardly ever go out. My health comes from living outside the culture to the extent that I can; I can't face just going into town for all the mid-wit upper-wit bullshit.
I feel some similarity with you. I'm by no means "super intelligent." The closest thing to a formal IQ test I've had was my high school SAT = 1280. That's far from the top (1600) but it did report me well into the 90th percentile. Not even gifted. A midwit, in other words. I "walked away" from at the least, a fully paid university education. I chose leisure, drugs and alcohol instead. I did "grow up" eventually, even got a degree or two but it was in my late 30s!
Good for you. To be clear I picked up the term “super intelligence” from the article. I do not think of myself that way. The subject of these two articles by Eugyppius is IQ and intelligence and I happen to have scored highly on that test many years ago. I don’t give it much weight. I can’t deny that I have skills that others don’t, but they are only tools. Intelligence is not a measure of character. My comments are driven by the fact that the analysis I find in these last two posts shed light on the curious course of my life. Thanks for your response. Best wishes.
I have found that people confuse a desire to ask questions and explore a topic in conversation with disagreement. It’s depressing how many people can’t deal with any discussion that doesn’t confirm prior beliefs. If you want friends, you have to find people who don’t take ideas personally. I don’t know why so many people make some idea like “vaccines are generally useful” part of their personalities. I guess they’re afraid if they dislodge an idea, they will have a blank spot in their world where the idea used to be. People seem more willing to be wrong than uncertain. But I think it’s because most are more comfortable in the middle of the pack. The heuristic of ‘I’ll see what everyone else is doing and do that’ often works. At least it keeps them feeling psychologically safe.
That years spent gaining a 'higher education' is likely to result in More not Less groupthink tendencies is the great irony and paradox of 21st c. Western Liberalism; (in not ALL but the great MAJORITY of college graduates.) As I read it, this is what this post is saying. Saul Bellow saw it too: "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep" . https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
I would really like to see the research on that. I have not seen much anecdotally that intelligent people are less likely to be wrong. What I've noticed in America is the more titles under a persons name, the more they assume that they are right in every sphere. I think there's more than a but of the halo edfect going on.
Yes I agree 'smugness' might be an approriate term. I did read some research years back but I have no idea where I found it unfortunately. Just from my personal experience those I know who are highly qualified academics and doctors all took the jab whereas those with a more working class background seem to be the most skeptical. I don't think I can honestly say I personally know anyone who is super intelligent.
I have not watched the video, but I bet the reason why super intelligent people are non conformist is because they they aren't very good at conformity.
fwiw: Eugyppius was just making a general statistical observation about how intelligence functions in our society, not about the actual nature of intelligence, etc. Eugyppius doesn't claim to know what the nature of intelligence itself is but many commentators feel that they do.
No one even understands themselves but they nonetheless tend to think they can understand others. Homo saps in a nutshell: always concerned with what the other guy has/does, not his own.
Eugyppius is one of my first picks to have my back in a data/logic back alley knife fight.
Let's hear it for the countless subgeniuses among us, especially ourselves, none of whom are as smart as they think they are! (They may be smarter or dumber but no one can measure themselves anymore than a ruler can measure itself.) Hooray for us!
"Eugyppius is one of my first picks to have my back in a data/logic back alley knife fight." -- yes but people like Eugyppius, El Gato etc (not to mention the super analytical Ethical Sceptic) are powerless against a midwit. Let alone a scared-out-of-their-head-by-24/7media- fearporn midwit.
Sharp IQ tools do not penetrate dull(ed) minds.
If I could have a dollar for every time I was about to forward a substack to a scared-shitless cc120 IQ friend about to get boosted, only to think better of it.
One doesn't argue with ignorance. If necessary for survival, one kicks its ass. But looking down on the ignorant demeans us. We iz wutt we r, and few of us are any good at it... imo.
I see myself as a clueless cell in a vast organ called Terra in a vaster organ called the Milky Way, in a vast organ called a galactic cluster in a vast organ called the cosmos, within...?
I don't even know what I don't know. Ignorance cannot assess itself any more than a ruler can measure itself.
Sep 28, 2023·edited Sep 28, 2023Liked by eugyppius
One of your most important articles to date. As someone who has walked in HBD circles since 2012 most of this was already known to me, but you put it in a very clear way that I often have struggled to.
When it comes to the mid-wit I think nothing illuminates it more than the green energy argument.
The mid-wit knows that we need clean, efficient energy and yet, when you confront them with the reality that this is Nuclear Power and likely will be for the immediate future, they immediately switch-off. The infamous "NPC Stare" develops upon them. "Oh no, but <select as appropriate: [Chernobyl, toxic waste, Uranium imports, radiation poisoning the environment]>!"
It's unfortunate then that these people make substantial and long lasting policy positions such as: "Wind farms everywhere!" "Electric cars!" and "solar panels everywhere!"
I think there is a connection with the bureaucratic system we live under here. These are the people who are selected and favoured by this kind of regime.
Somewhere along the way, the 'energy' in "alternative energy" turned into "electricity delivered to our homes". (Goddam Tesla.)
Wind power is great... for pumping water and so forth. Solar power is great for some things.
Our main problem is we can't imagine life without gizmos run by electricity, and so we will likely soon find ourselves fouling the skies with wood and coal smoke while we trade dried fish and fur for slaves. Gonna be a difficult century except not so much for the Russian bloc, who froze and starved enough in the 20th century to understand why fossil fuels and nuclear power are necessary to continue our privileged technoospheric(sic) existence for another century or two.
Strictly speaking we don't "need" it, but it would of course be more desirable from most parties' point of view to have less-polluting energy if it could be had at completive cost to existing means of energy use. "Most" in this case, since it obviously the fossil fuel interests would be unhappy if their market share dropped. While I have no way to prove it of course (and it's probably not an original insight) if a workable new form of clean energy suddenly appeared -- say, nuclear fusion -- it's likely it would lead to severe economic problems, perhaps even a depression, since so much of the world's economy is inextricably tied to fossil fuels. And even if no such distortion occurred, under any realistic scenarios, it would take many decades to transition. In fact this latter limitation” puts the lie to" the Green advocates' urgency to meet a transition date of 2050 or whatever. Ridiculous. No way in hell it could be done, even if everyone were 100% on board with the pie-in-the-sky agendas.
You seem midwit conformist for ignoring solar thermal + salt ballast. It's pretty safe to ignore because for political reasons will probably never happen but still
"Socially and culturally, vaccination is for them; it is an activity in which they feel personally invested with which they especially identify."
Nailed it. That's all it is. It is basically another consumer identity to occupy. It's nice, it provides a sense of meaning on several levels. However, it's based less and less on anything concrete. You know how it goes from there.
It applies to many things in life including physical strength. 70% of people will be of average strength, 15% will be naturally piss-weak and 15% will be naturally freakishly strong. All parts of the continuum can get stronger from their respective starting points is the optimistic way of looking at it though. And strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general to quote "Starting Strength".
"Optimistic" is the operative word here. Your comments are largely correct. In most cases, physical strength is something that can be gained by exercises, working out, etc. Or equivalently, existing strength atrophies if not maintained by exercise. Alas, not all attributes are as mutable, however. Intelligence is one of those. [I'm not an expert, but I have read a couple books.] Eugyppius gave us the example of the genius who might choose between a job demanding great intellect vs. unskilled labor. True enough. But I note the converse is impossible: The ditch digger with an IQ of 85 is never going to be a doctor, lawyer, probably not even a restaurant manager, at least, not one you would want to hire probably. Whether we like it or not, intelligence is to some degree genetic and thus fixed. Clearly there are environmental factors too, especially developmental, as any child who snacked on lead paint chips could attest.
Optimism is all well and good, except when it becomes a dominant dogma in open denial of the underlying realities. To return to the bodybuilder example: In an optimum world, we would have a system that provided the best opportunity for self-development reasonably possible. But we live in a world where we must pretend, at least officially, that everybody can be an Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. It just ain’t so.
Thanks for the support. If I could expand on this a bit, there is a real bell curve distribution of intelligence among people. I won't get into the alleged differences among races, which appear to be real at any rate. But there is an average intelligence, which we benchmark at 100. This is someone who can easily get by in a modern society as a skilled mechanic, heavy equipment operator, skilled office worker etc. They can use technology, but they are not going to invent or implement anything new. At the high end, you have the geniuses who study all manner of abstract things, like quantum mechanics. They not only come up with completely new ideas, they invent new fields of study. In between the average and the geniuses, you have the so called "mid-wits." At this level you have people who, while not inventing new fields of study, are capable of translating the genius stuff into workable solutions, which the geniuses often can't do. So far, so good for a functioning society.
But, what one has to keep in mind is that fully half the population is below that median of 100. A lot of these folks can still fall into the skilled or semi-skilled labor market, but many more cannot. These people are here, they're not getting any smarter and they're not going anywhere anytime soon, so society has to find something meaningful for them to do. That is not only the morally right thing to do, since everyone deserves an opportunity to pursue happiness as they see it. It is also a matter of security for the folks who occupy the to half of that distribution. People with nothing to do and a low IQ are a riot waiting to happen. Just look at American inner cities. And it can easily get uglier than it is now.
So, the imperative for our mid-wit managers should be to manage their given country such that the lower 50% of the distribution is given an opportunity to prosper to the extent of their abilities. Of course, you can't fix stupid as they say, so there will always be some hard core unemployable lower class. But that should be minimized.
I don't think I have to tell anyone that the powers that be in the mid-wit class of government and industry managers has been doing the exact opposite of this for at least the last 40 years, maybe longer. Exporting jobs that would be filled by the lower 50%, while importing more people that fall into that lower 50% is idiotic in the extreme.
So it is with mildly intelligent self-interested people. I myself fall somewhere in that mid-wit cohort, but at least I have the self awareness to understand these things.
Thank you for several incisive insights that are seldom spoken of. I would just expand on this. Another factor that's related are the vast differences in birth rates. The smartest factions (e.g. East Asians, Caucasians) tend to breed way below replacement rate, while the less intelligent are very fertile indeed. That, ladies and gentlemen, is to a large degree why North America and the EU are being overrun by brown and black migrants legal or otherwise. I wish that all those new entrants would become model Americans, Canadians, Germans, Brits, etc. but the data say otherwise. The underlying problems are even worse than that, if one takes into consideration WHY the third world population is booming. Essentially because they benefit from Western technology: medical care, food, and sanitation, to some degree. By all means denounce me as a racist and a white supremacist. There, do you feel better? I knew you would.
Permit me to close with a final note of pessimism: In coming decades the world is indeed going to live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse allegedly puts it.
Well eugyppius, your timing is interesting. Literally one day before your first Midwits post I watched a 90 minute documentary on how people, all kinds of people, are taken in by flim-flam marketing for things like miracle cures for male pattern baldness, weight loss pills and potions that promise losing 10lbs per day with no dieting or exercise, or that mass shootings are really "false flag" events or stock and crypto and other "investment opportunities."
It was very interesting. The film makers didn't put a lot of emphasis specifically on intelligence, except to say that people from janitors and DMV clerks to lawyers and doctors fall for these things time and time again. Instead they delved deeply into *why* people believe these things and fall for them.
The short answer is that people believe foolish things BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. And the reasons they want to believe mostly center on the fact that believing makes them *feel* better somehow. It's emotional, not intellectual. And this is exactly what I saw during the crazy circus of the 3 years of the pandemic. The media absolutely terrified a whole lot of people. Masks made them *feel* better and safer. Vaccs made them *feel* better and safer. Following government guidelines made them *feel* better and safer. But as we know it was all flim-flam and did nothing real.
The documentary was made in 2018, just so you know, long before covid. And I do agree that intelligence is a factor. But so is wanting to feel better when the television, the internet, the radio, and the newspaper are all screaming 24/7 OMG OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE OMG OMG!!!!
Modern human culture is not just irrational, but armed to the armpits. It is logically true that we need to feel good enough about life to want to live. Hard to do despite modern comforts and miracles. We become gullible and vulnerable when frightened and exhausted, and modern society is exhaustingly frightening even for so-called simpletons.
So we reach for things to soothe us. Drugs, 24/7 media, a psychedelic array of take-home food, your favorite song by your favorite band... the need for soothing is rational. The things we use to soothe ourselves are often not rational.
Sunddenly death became a real concrete hypothesis for us all, but…
We are all going to die, aren’t we?
Life is only precious because it will end someday…. Forever would be unbearable.
I still cannot understand why people chose not to live (or hold precious life still) to avoid death from a almost nonexisting threat or peril, let alone being jabed with an obviously dubious potential dangerous potion.
Are we mainly midwits or halfwits when Fear takes command? What personal trait allows for Fear control? Certainly not itelligence!
If "midwit" meant a person of average IQ (actually it means someone a bit smarter), then at about 129, I would be what, perhaps a one-and-a quarter wit? 🤓
Well, I followed the concept of blind vanity associated with midwits and brougth it down to halfwits as a waste of “intelligence”, maybe?
Midwits: Someone who is around average intelligence but is so opinionated and full of themselves that they think they're some kind of genius. Midwits have a shallow understanding of things and at first can seem a bit smart, until you dig deeper and realize they're just posers.
Halfwits: If you describe someone as a halfwit, you think they have behaved in a stupid, silly, or irresponsible way. A halfwit is a person who has little intelligence.
Remember, fear is visceral, emotional. Instinctual. Taken all the way into panic it can make people do incredibly stupid things. In panic no one can think, it's not possible. Panic is great if a hungry tiger is chasing you and you need to get away fast- not much need for thinking there. But a pandemic is a much different thing, not least of which is that there's nowhere to run.
For myself and my own reaction, all I can you is, I wasn't fearful and I never paniced. I was cautious, which is pretty much the polar opposite of panic. I'm old enough to remember other epidemics, mostly flu but also a few others. So I took a "wait and see" attitude. To this day I don't know anyone who died of covid.
As to the vaccs itself, the reason I never got it was mainly because of the TGN1412 'first in humans' clinical trial in 2006. I had seen a very good documentary about it and then also read as much as I could find about it. The short version of the story is that monoclonal antibodies biologic drug for the treatment of leukemia nearly killed everyone innthe trial that got the drug and not the placebo. So basically I was more afraid of the vaccs than I was of covid, because just like TGN1412 it had never been used in humans before, AND it was a rush job, "warp speed" and all that.
TGN1412 may have been a flop. However, it is NOT a gene therapy in the same sense that the mRNA jabs are. Based on a quick read, it's a monoclonal antibody externally produced, then injected into the patient. That's a rather different mechanism than hijacking the patients own cells with fake mRNA to induce the cells to produce a protein in-situ. In the latter case you are introducing a whole new level of complexity and the risk of unknown side effects.
Ok, maybe I wasn't clear when I said TGN1412 was a monoclonal antibodies biologic drug. I did say IT WAS A 'FIRST IN HUMANS' TRIAL. But it wasn't just a flop. All six of the study participants that received the drug were hospitalized in intensive care with cytokine storm that caused multiple organ failure and NEARLY DIED. One of the victims lost all his fingers and toes. Some of the others are severely and permanently disabled. It wasn't "a flop" it was a f*cking catastrophe that very nearly killed 6 people.
You missed my point completely. My point has *NOTHING* to do with the kind of drugs and the differences between them. My point is that *neither* TGN1412 or the covid vaccs HAD EVER BEEN USED IN HUMANS BEFORE. And with TGN1412 no one, not the doctors, developers, pharma company, NO ONE HAD ANY IDEA IT WAS GOING TO DO WHAT IT DID AND NEARLY KILL SIX PREVIOUSLY PERFRCTLY PEOPLE. And the truth is, no one knows what the covid vaccs is going to do to people over the long term. AND it was rushed with the orange ahole's "warp speed* bullshit. No one in their right mind would take a drug like that and certainly not me.
I'm sorry but intelligent people understand that there are more important things to feeling better. Did you read the article above? The person leaves a job because they are unwilling to play a game that supports the unintelligent .
Charles Murray is my go to expert on IQ -- he literally wrote the book on it, titled "The Bell Curve" in 1994. IQ is one of the most reliably measured human psychological traits, and it is highly correlated with success in life. But beyond that there is Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences -- which explains why a guy might have a very high "football IQ," but can't meet the entrance requirements for his hometown State University. Murray also says that extremely high IQ isn't required for success in most cognitively demanding fields. You just need to be smarter than some threshold IQ level, which he puts at around 120. In today's world it's really hard to know the truth about any issue no matter how smart your are, in particular one such as COVID where experts are telling us vastly different stories and we need to act urgently. I judged my susceptibility to COVID was low owing to a lack of serious health concerns, even though I'm a senior in age, and turned out I was correct. I got COVID but it was a mild case for me.
The thing about Murray is he mixes in a bunch of jackass nonsense like women underrepresented among famous mathematicians with zero effort to address confounds. He seems mostly troll
The academic world, USA at least, is way down the chute. There was a recent news item about Temple University. Many incoming freshmen struggle with math and require remedial classes. This would hardly be news if we were talking about "athletic scholarship" students with the IQ of a janitor. But no, in this case we are talking about STEM majors.
Steven Jay Gould wrote a refutation of the Bell Curve, The Mismeasure of Man
from Amazon
When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits.
And yet the idea of innate limits—of biology as destiny—dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."
Not that it isn't refreshing that people are discussing this taboo subject. I think there are other perhaps hidden variables. Ann Masten, the world's leading researcher on resilience, finds it incontrovertible that cognitive ability is correlated with resilience. That might predict conformity especially in face of purported pathogens since the Head Girls have developed without much capacity for resilience perhaps? I'd test them for disgust sensitivity also. And add to the Big 5 a Cluster B test, including sociopathy.
And, according to Iain McGilchrist, in The Matter with Things, testing favors the skills of the left hemisphere of the brain and the taxonomic skills, the "scientific spectacles," that technological culture values. He also discusses the Reverse Flynn Effect, that something about our environments is lowering IQ. We'll end up with the globe like Elizabeth Nietzsche's eugenical colony in Paraguay, where the slack-jawed and inbred remain, if we don't allow this to be researched, so I think such a discussion is great!
"The Mismeasure of Man" published in 1981 doesn't refute "The Bell Curve" published in 1994. I haven't read Gould, but have read much about him -- especially in Steven Pinker's books. I think the left's work to deny the existence of real, measurable IQ is one of the great examples of a disinformation campaign. It attempts to impose the "blank slate" theory, which holds that human cognitive capacity is solely a function of environment with no hereditary component. This is, of course, ridiculous. The destructive side of "blank slate" thinking comes about in our education system, where we behave as if every child can be raised to any level of intellectual achievement via dedicated and clever teaching methods, lots of money, and devoted teachers. There are many popular movies that "prove" this is true. But it's not, and we waste huge resources in the pursuit of "test scores" which stubbornly refuse to reflect the effort put into seeing them go up, not down. I watched a video recently of Jordan Peterson who said IQ is one of the few human traits that we can measure accurately, the result of 150 years of research and huge data sets accumulated mostly by the U.S. armed forces. So I'll stick with Charles Murray and "The Bell Curve" despite the protestations of Gould.
I can't cite you a source, but I recall reading that Gould's "Mismeasure" was denounced as fraudulent. In any event, I did skim that book, and Gould proudly touts his liberal/Marxist heritage from the opening.
The results of the study are not surprising at all. IQ tests are designed to provide good grades to people that agree to learn whatever they have been told they should learn. It is no wonder that when they are told to get vaccinated ASAP, those with the higher grades comply faster with the mandate.
Yes - since they moved away from language-based assessment, they are a decent measure of pattern recognition ability, which correlates well with what we think of as intelligence. It's a propensity which can be honed through practice, but I'm not sure how much it can be taught.
High IQ and common sense are probably not correlated. In fact an awful lot of nonsense can only be "understood" by people with high IQ, as shitlibs are so fond of informing us. Independent thinking (I guess in the 4 factor model, this would be "disagreeableness") is also not correlated with a capacity for abstract thought. When you find disagreeable smarties, they rarely have jobs in positions of authority for reasons you say.
Of my intelligent friends who took the vax, one is a perfect embodiment of head girl syndrome: agreeable, doesn't like thinking independently, defers to experts, feels smug about it. Smart, but doesn't want to think. A couple of others are absolutely excellent researchers who nerded out hard on MRNA vaccine propaganda as if it were actual data. They still can't admit they got owned, though they stopped getting shots at least. I looked at the data that was available (my job title is "data scientist" more or less) and thought it was a no-brainer. Not a dangerous disease from the cruise ship data available in April, and even the pfizer data indicated early on that it was a fairly dangerous and useless vaccine for a fairly innocuous disease. Apparently nobody else looked at the appendix where the effectiveness number came from.
TLDR 1-factor models of human behavior are rarely going to work.
I don't know what "common sense" is, but I suspect it's not a coherent concept. I don't think any psychometricians, in studying intelligence, are proposing a one-factor model of human behaviour, and that's definitely not my aim here either.
There was a common pattern in physics grad school where the undoubtedly high IQ Chinese grad student from rice patty village would enter experimental physics lab and be completely unable to debug anything or make anything work unless it was described in the instructions. The redneck who used to work on cars and was dumber on tests could always make the experimental apparatus go. That's common sense, and if psychologists weren't WEIRD retards they could devise a test for it..
IQ tests for various kinds of memory and ability to manipulate abstractions: that's an interesting factor which tells you something about brain capabilities under test: doesn't mean you can do anything with your impressively capable brain. Which is why Mensa international is a club for losers, not a group of people changing the world.
this forum is full of excellent people, but I find that there are no philosophers here, especially ones that are pre-Enlightenment specialists. Aristotle etc. Psychology is a post-Enlightenment idea and is based on positivist ideas (falsificationism also belongs to positivism: see Duhem/Quine). Common sense is the household variety of Aristotle's practical wisdom and therefore the polar opposite of IQ. I once asked our bookclub (most meetings are on some outdoor shooting range) why nobody even considered taking the gene serum. We are a very mixed bunch: profs, salespeople, craftsmen, housewives) and the only common denominator was an independence: we simply didn't care what "everybody" says - we look at things before we form a belief.
I am still holding on to a person's employment being the key driver in vaccine uptake. Big corps, big institutions (academic, religious, military), or "high hierarchical", will be the biggest single explanatory factor amongst the vaccinated, and conversely those employed in menial, small organizations, or self-employed or "low hierarchical" will be at the lower vaccinated level. A person's job environment during the vaxx madness was the 'big bat in the room'. Sadly, this means that society will become dumber as the smart folk die prematurely, and breed less in the interim. Dark Times.
Agreed.. But that doesn't distinguish those who merely submitted to economic coercion from those who complied docilely or even gladly.
fwiw, I for one don't bemoan the probable reduction in above-average bright people. A mob of people thinking they're smarter than those they deem less intelligent, is a highly vicious mob.
Intelligence is highly overrated. Pandora's Box and the Garden of Eden myths agree.
I long for the day - that may never come - when the value of those in “dumb” professions is recognized. One competent plumber likely does more good in the world than ten university professors.
Amen. My elder son is a plumber. He will soon be in much greater demand than the zillion software coders currently employed.
What I say all the time, those traders, farmers etc ARE THE ELITE! They produce something.
In my age group, I am 72, many took the vax to travel, especially to visit children, even against their better judgement. I have no clue of my IQ, I know I am considered a little above average by people I worked with. The strange thing is that all my family that submitted so willingly, all professional people, consider me and my children very unintelligent. Funny as both my sons have done very well academically and are both above average intelligence even if I have to say so myself. I have given up with these people.
"I for one don't bemoan the probable reduction in above-average bright people. A mob of people thinking they're smarter than those they deem less intelligent, is a highly vicious mob."
Amen to that. 2021-2022 was insufferable in my little corner of the world in NJ. The smug derision and open mocking of "do your own research" was unbearable. It was enough to nearly extinguish my ability to feel pity.
I agree. Great points.
Sweden did not have any forced vaccination like the US or other countries.
Important, extremely relevant point.
No even among the companies?
No, not at all. There was a push to mandate it in healthcare but did not go anywhere. Swedes got an EU conforming vaccine passport for travel purposes only. There was also a move to require it for large gatherings in late 2021 but it failed. It happened after Tegnell resigned and they also got a new female PM. It was an all female crew at that point and they were looking to copy restrictions in other countries but did not materialize.
Scandinavia has a tradition that vaccines are voluntary but has very large conformity for childhood vaccines. No mandates like in the US for schools.
I should add that it would be illegal in Sweden for a company to mandate it. This would have to be implemented by the State via an act in parliament and there might be some constitutional issues.
mandating being illegal in the U.S. sure didn't stop many employers from doing it
Well the US approach was to mandate the companies to mandate it via OSHA. Fortunately, the courts put a stop to it. I think Sweden, despite being quite socialist, still respects individual rights.
Also socialist Sweden has full school choice via vouchers and privatized social security! So maybe the US is more socialist. Kind of an ugly national socialism. (No not hat word! Nazis, they are, damn it.)
In last nights news ,the sickness Kommissar ,also known as the Provincial Health minister of the province of British Columbia announced that all the virus prevention measures of the recent pandemic will be reinstated shortly .That is masks, social distance mandated injections in all public locations ,especially in medical settings .
Please tell me this isn't true. Currently in México and will not come home if Henry is allowed by the population to run amok again. It's like the sea air has infected British Columbian's brains with something that she is listened to at all. Who ever believed the vaccinated needed to be protected from the unjabbed?!?! Absolutely crazy but almost everyone listened. More tequila needed 🤪
Yes what I wrote about yesterday was again broadcast on the news .The reinstatement of medical terror in British Columbia .The witch Bonny Henry is behind the never ending virus hunt . In that hunt we are really the game animals for that beast of a female . If I had the power I would send her on the spot to her whyruss heaven
Whaaaat?!? I missed that. They can all F off!! Guess I’m going to be a hermit again if that’s the case.
They also said on the news ,that guards will be at hospital entrance to make sure the commands are followed . I.m scared to look what will happen at grocery stores .I see some young people jogging fully masked below my window . I feel so mentally tortured by now that I think of suicide more often now .
So far, just masking in medical settings. No reason to think she'll stop at that, of course. As long as BC residents go along with it, she'll continue to increase restrictions.
I'm glad I got a chance to travel there in the mid-90s before the immigration disaster that came later. Among the many novel sights I saw were that Norwegian moms could leave the baby carriage unattended on the walk in front of the store while they shopped. That'd be unthinkable in the US. I'd be very surprised if they can do that thirty years later.
For nearly 20 years was "pen pal" with a Swedish woman. Around 2016 I commented something to the effect "I'm dismayed to read what uncontrolled immigration has done to your country." She never wrote back. I guess I hit a nerve.
Los Angeles update: yesterday the LA Unified School District finally rescinded its employee vax mandate (under which hundreds were fired).
https://laist.com/news/education/lausd-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-ended-2023
(This article sucks--see the last paragraph: "Get Vaccinated!", but I link it because it's not behind a paywall, as the LA Times and Daily News articles are.)
The City of Los Angeles employee vax mandate is STILL in effect (about 50K employees, new hires, volunteers).
Rescinded only in the face of certain defeat in the lawsuit against it.
Yes, indeed. Interesting that the Vaccinators were confident that all judges in the country would back up the Vax Push and mandates across the board and squash any challenges, and that's turning out to not be so reliable.
settling for courtroom wins seems pretty good. Maybe there are parts of the Constitution still operative.
Agreed. Unfortunately these cases move slowly through the courts and bankrupt the righteous plaintiffs in the process.
Not necessarily, if an attorney would take a case pro bono. Or for contingency fees. 30% or more of a large judgment will buy a lot of BMWs, private school tuition, a bigger place at the Hamptons, or make paying support to that bitch, the Ex easier. I suspect a lot of legal firms shy away from such cases because of the potential threat to the firm or individual attorney's future business prospects.
everyone with a case should put up a go-fund-me
Thank Goodness!
The province of BC in Canada still requires shots for all health care workers and they still refuse to hire back those that were fired for refusal.
That's so they can bring in compliant immigrants who will be forced to do whatever they're told.
Already happening.
BC is retarded. I want to throw something at BH whenever her mug shows up. Eby and Farnworth as well.
And masks for anyone inside health facilities again now.
Interestingly, last year my home required a large plumbing job. This involved 2 1/2 months of work by several plumbers. Virtually, none of them had taken the vaccine, and while most of them were intelligent enough, I would not suppose they were more than average IQ. What, impressed me, in discussing the subject with them, was their willingness to question the authorities position on the subject, and to “do their own research” for their own decision. It seems to me that this was more “intelligent” than the average doctor’s or lawyer’s view.
I believe that there is more than one kind of intelligence, and perhaps if the professional classes breed less, it may not be as bad as you think. Let’s hope so, anyway.
During 2020 and 2021 we lived and worked on a farm (more admin work) No one there gave masks, social distancing or the vax even a moments thought and nobody got ill, all fit as a fiddle!
One explanation for this effect, that manual workers & tradesmen (& women) are less likely than “the intelligentsia” to get jabbed is real world vs virtual world views.
Those no longer ever exposed to real, physical danger are instead using an internal, or “virtual”, model of reality. They’re constitutionally unlikely to “do their own research” and more likely to believe official lies. Conformity & acceptance is very important to them and is professionally necessary.
Because of the foregoing, they won’t believe any of the stories that show officials as being ruthless beasts. They are members of a group who a psychologist, I believe, described as “Some people would prefer to die with the herd than to leave the herd”.
By contrast, there are men who work with their hands, using power tools, working at height or with high voltages, deal with hazardous chemicals, explosive gases, who load & unload heavy machinery, who drive heavy goods vehicles etc etc.
These people are used to assessing real risks, well aware that if they get it wrong, at best it will impoverish them If they won’t work in response to new non-existent threats, they’ll lose money and fail.
If on the other hand, they misjudge a real risk, they may get injured or even killed.
So this cohort will initially pay attention to what we’re all told about “the scary virus”, soon realise that, whatever else is going on, the scary virus risk thing eas, at very least, being exaggerated.
So very early on, the manual trades were less likely to be jabbed. Furthermore, in the 9 months between the official start of the non-existent crisis, this same cohort on average parted ways from the isolated professional cohorts.
Because the manual workers realised there was no unusual risk, why would they want to be vaccinated against a non-existent risk? And it’s a new product, this “vaccine”, so by definition, assurances of safety were fraudulent.
Not to say that all professionals got jabbed & non of the tradesmen did.
It’s a trend, that’s all.
Best wishes
Mike
“It’s a trend, that’s all”: yes. I think there’s something to your theory, but like all theories, it doesn’t apply all the time. In general, more of the tradesmen I speak to have less “automatic” conformity with authority (and often more common-sense views, which are obviously non-woke). But I can think of a couple who are truly “textbook woke”, probably based on too much uncritical consumption of MSM. Still, I think the theory is valid.
I consider it spot on Mike. It has been my observation too. I was a building surveyor and had to assess risks. I knew the tradesmen were by and large good sorts who knew more than me on their individual trades. I think one might use the word 'canny' when it came to the COVID 19 nonsense.
As I stopped working in late 2020 due my firm's stupidity over coronavirus 'rules' they introduced believing the government guidance was compulsory and ignoring existing health & safety legislation I have no idea whether my colleagues got vaccinated in the end or not.
Given some at least believe the foolishness maybe they did in the end.
There’s no yardstick for that kind of intelligence. It’s maybe max midwit to believe only that which can be measured truly exists.
looking at USA data - this is Ed Dowd's thesis: it was detrimental to your health to be employed in the USA in 2021 - highlighting a temporal correlation btw an increase in non covid related deaths + work hours missed + initiation of an increase in disability claims and increasing coercive rhetoric then the 'if your at an employer of more than 100 you must compel vaccination among your workforce ' exec order from the biden admin through OSHA.
dowd recently went on dr drew's show again in which dr drew- to his credit- brought on a viewer to challenge dowd's assertion. the viewer/caller cited sweedish data saying they have lower excess mortality (which one would expect after a pandemic killed the weakest amongst the herd), but dowd countered stating while in 21 sweden saw lower excess mortality, more recent data from '22 is showing growing excess mortality.
"detrimental to your health to be employed in the USA in 2021," LOL.
As if lame bosses, crap wages, toxic work environments weren't enough--they add on VAX mandates...
Gotta love Ed Dowd...
https://phinancetechnologies.com
A huge factor for sure. But I was also surprised at how many people that I spoke with who were all in on “the government is insanely evil, this whole thing is a scam” and yet inexplicably still rolled up the sleeve.
Also depends on where they were employed. My siblings both have government jobs. Should I have to explain any further than that?
Also “vaccines” were always considered harmless and helpful.
Alas, to some extent they leave their users helpless because they are harmful.
Another aspect is the conditioning of higher education to regurgitate what is fed. Most universities and professors do not want questioning students. Many with higher education who willingly were jabbed are conditioned to not question. The study is describing those with higher educations have a higher intelligence. The accurate way would to test the hypothesis is an intelligence test of some sort on every adult and add vaccination status. Or devise a test to see why some questioned and some didn’t.
I did this. Probably not what you were looking for but it amused me to do it.
https://baldmichael.substack.com/p/the-great-covid-retest
The Flynn effect is reversing in many countries, so it is difficult to challenge your assertion.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/
Sounds reasonable. Other factors were important too. Example, I didn't want the vax, but I did want to travel cross-border, and I didn't want to defer that travel for two years. So I got the vax, betting that the really bad side effects would be rare enough that I wouldn't be affected. So far, so good.
Just the opposite. I chose to defer travel rather than tale an unproven “vaccine”. All good here without a so far.
I appreciate your point of view. I sometimes look back at my choice as frivolous. If I end up with some long term negative health effects, then that judgement will be clear.
I also hope you have not long term effects. My one niece is a teacher and had to take the vax in 2021 and only now ended up with an emergency Caesar and blood clots!
I will pray for her. How many of us who took the vax will later develop clots? It is a fair question. If I get them, there is no doubt I will feel foolish because, unlike your niece, I wasn't forced to get vaxed to keep my job. Clots were in the back of my mind when on the airplane from Denver to Munich on September 16th, flying in high altitude - always a risk of an embolism on a long flight like that. Again, praying for your niece.
I certainly hope that your “so far” continues for a long time.
Thanks. In fact I just had my annual "executive physical" at the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday. No sign of any heart issues, thankfully, as I am just now turning 60 years old.
👍
SAD
If they were intelligent, they could of problem solve it
A very accurate analysis...Mid-wits dominate our society, and they tend to promote people a bit less intelligent than themselves to protect their positions in organizations..Those people then promote even less intelligent people, etc..As one of the accursed who scores in the 99.99th percentile, I feel blessed that I have a wife, kids and some friends who will put up with me! But my very sound arguments against the death-vax were met with blank incomprehension by many of our friends and relatives....In my next life, I want to be a high mid-wit, Please!
Yes being more attractive and less intelligent is probably the best trade off. Not smart enough to know that looks fade and that you’re getting lied to might help as well. Sad but true. Lol.
lol
Agreed on all counts but your last sentence. It’s lonely being exceptional, but the alternative would be unbearable.
You have a good point...I'm probably this way because I really want to be, despite its inconveniences...
No thank you. I wouldn't trade my intelligence for greater acceptance.
It's possible to understand, it would be like dimming all the lights permanently. But it's difficult socially.
I agree, this is the reason why I have always had very few friends. Also I am considered "pushy" because I try and reason with people.
It's hard to see outside of your own experience. It's perhaps the difference between SD TV and UHD TV. Same movie but it is a lot more information.
Yes. Everyone's situation will be different. I have super smarts, but socially I am within two standard deviations of the norm.
The problem with this trend, as outlined by El Gato Malo is that these people tend to be "true believers." And who is more believable, the intelligent grifter who knows he is grifting, or one of the recruits who is "all in" on whatever narrative they were hired in on?
I also find they promote those that do not ask questions. You have to follow blindly
Well, I certainly didn't object to your first post, Eugyppius. In fact, I've long had my own pet name for a similar phenomenon. I called it "The Dunning-Kruger effect of the second order." The first-order Dunning-Kruger effect is the well-known phenomenon of very dim people not understanding how much dimmer they are then average, because they can't. The second-order Dunning-Kruger effect is the midwits, the 110 IQ people, being so complacent and arrogant with being a little bit smarter than average, that they cannot comprehend just how far short they fall of real genius.
I have also many times had recourse to the following explanation: It's more easy to bamboozle a midwit than an average wit or a genius, especially if you flatter his intellect. If you tell the midwit some cock-and-bull story and tell him that the cool kids all believe it, he will devote his intellectual energy not to questioning the story but to thinking up remotely plausible scenarios under which it might be true, so that he can maintain the fission of feeling smart and special. Average people don't do this and geniuses won't do it. Only the midwits are that gullible.
The Doobie Brothers knew that. "What a fool believes he sees, the wise man has the power to reason away."
Your "2nd-order Dunning-Kruger Effect" has, by my reckoning, a shorter synonym: "smugnorance", which was coined in the late 2010s.
The dim-witted generally don't care enough to rise to smugness, since they have more to lose than gain by trying to cultivate an image of high intelligence. Smugnorance is the preserve, instead, of conformist midwits. The weaponization of "flat-earth theory" is the touchstone of smugnorance, where it is used to close off any possibility of debate. We were told, for instance that only someone on the level of a flat-earther could question the rigorously scientific conduct of company Pf., or doubt that this company's concoctions were anything other than safe and effective. Never mind that the same company had been fined several billions of dollars for fraud, including the bribing of members of the medical profession. To the smugnorant, there cannot even be prima facie grounds for suspicion that such fraudulent actors might be very anxious to gain multi-billion dollar government contracts, but not at all anxious about the effects of their concoctions, since they had demanded that the contracts include indemnity.
Brilliant. To paraphrase Charlie Munger, there's nothing more dangerous than a chap with an IQ of 110 who believes he has an IQ of 120.
Yup, true dat!
Your definition of ["first order"] Dunning-Kruger is wrong. But don't feel bad; it's the popular misconception. The popular version isn't totally wrong, but it's an over-simplification.
The more correct version is that a person tends to over-estimate his competence in one specific area. Note that this says nothing about the person’s average intelligence, only that in one particular specialty his self-assessment of his competence is likely inflated.
The popular definition goes wrong by assuming that a dumbfuck over-estimates his general abilities.
I was trying to equate DK with the religious sin of Pride. But no; pride is a positive emotion felt as a result of one's achievement. Therefore it could be "true" pride (you really did accomplsih something) or false pride (you deluded yourself.) Clearly the latter aligns more with DK, but what about the distinction between general/specific? I don't think it exists with pride (I could be proud of everything, or just one thing) but it matters with DK.
To give you a personal example: I'm well into the midwit range (IQ slightly above average, but I don't know exact figure) yet I've botched many things in my life, surely at least some of those because I was overconfident. That's precisely what Dunning-Kruger is saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
I believe there is a stupidity quotient that runs alongside I.Q. Some high I.Q people can be incredibly stupid while some low I.Q people can be very wise. Stupidity is no respecter of intelligence.
Our author: “nonsense is the province of man across the intelligence spectrum”
I like that idea
Common sense, street smarts, rational thought are more intelligent than IQ in my opinion. When the shit hits the fan I’d sure as hell rather have a plumber than a dumb ass lawyer (I work in a law office & yeah, all the lawyers got vax’d & we support staff all refused)
A plumber might be much more handy in a post zombie apocalypse environment than a lawyer...at least I know who I'd throw to the zombies to slow them down, and it ain't the plumber...
Since there will be no rule of law in a zombie apocalypse anyway, I’d much rather have the guy that can rig up a working toilet when the grid goes down 😅
Same environment here, though -bless me- working from home! Asked him if he didn’t smell a rat? Nah… he said he never read up on all the vax stuff, just assumed it to be ok. I am no genius at around 130, but i am curious and non-conformist by nature. And I could tell early on this was not about a “pandemic”. As a kid my favorite word was “why”.
One of the lawyers actually had the audacity / stupidity to tell us the governor’s illegal mask mandate was “the law”, in addition to believing very safe, Nobel prize winning Ivermectin was poison. When the office tried to make us wear masks, we all refused. So for several weeks the lawyers were wearing them & we were not, until they probably started to feel as stupid as they looked, & finally dropped the sanctimonious pretense.
Ah that gave me a good laugh Cindy! I could just picture your office. 😂
If you really want a laugh, after this dope told us it was “the law”, my bestie in the office (we’re both paralegals) piped up that there was more bacteria on his mask than the crack of his ass. We all burst out laughing & he just stood there, DUMBfounded because he’s dumb 😂
I have zero discipline to work from home so I admire you! Surprised you still can tho, now that the scam was declared official over by pedo Joe earlier this year.
No sense of humor that guy! But then the young eager beaver lawyer has little humor I find. Also not in my office. All sucking up in the rat race which probably explains why the mask has less germs than the crack of his ass. I am not from the u.s.a. so old Joe is not calling my shots😉. I’m from Europe and my work is mostly translation and editing, both of which go best from home. Been doing this for 17 years now. Best thing that happened!
This was a senior partner in his 60s. Anyway, support staff won the battle AND war on all of that nonsense.
I think it’s great that you can work from home & have the discipline to do so 😊!
This really hits close to home. As defined by the IQ test I am one of those super intelligent people. Since my early teenage years nonconformity has been a central feature in my life causing continual turbulence for my family and myself. I walked away, at a very young age, from opportunities that most can only dream about but which I did not value. I confounded everyone in my sphere.
Frankly, I’ve scratched my head over and over again through the years wondering how seemingly intelligent people could be so dumb. The subsequent decades of a long life have put more and more distance between me and the world into which I was born. Outside of family and friends there is no place in that culture I rejected where I fit in. (I’d like to think I’m a better person for it.)
Your analysis, Sir Eugypius, rings true (from the point of view of one member of one cohort now reporting in). You’ve given me more clarity on the subject and I thank you.
Pretty much my story too. Awesome name, btw. (Major Bohm fan, I am.)
Me too of course. You are the first to pick up on the name.
There is an inevitability in human affairs derived from incentives.
I’m not really here for discourse, but the temptation to weigh in occasionally is overpowering. Thanks for your input brother.
Aye. I'm slumming too, largely because eugypp says things worthy of dialog.
Want private dialog, I'm reachable at pastmastergeneral@gmail.com. YO, bro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rtpE9L6JCY
Bohm's "On Dialog" explains why I hardly bother anymore with online discourse these days, and mostly avoid argumentation.
His "On Thought as a System" explains why I believe it's pointless to expect humanity to do anything but complete its self-obliteration along with much of the ecosphere.
It’s no wonder that David Bohm was marginalized. He got too close to the truth.
If anybody’s watching, we must sound like a couple of arrogant assholes.
Ha ha ha, not at all
I see no arrogance in insisting on being true to oneself. That is genuine pride, which is neither elitist nor subservient but merely the honoring of the fact of being what/whom-ever one is. Arrogance, boastfulness, braggadocio come from insecurity.
I see much more arrogance in all the remarks about how stupid others are. Compared to what? I met a guy a few years ago who ran rings around me in terms of brain power. I know a few people locally who are intelligent enough to hold their own with me and, more impressively, seek wisdom... which for me is the true definition of genius. That said, being an IQ genius can force one to become a wisdom genius.
Quote:
genius (n.)
late 14c., "tutelary or moral spirit" who guides and governs an individual through life, from Latin genius "guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth; spirit, incarnation; wit, talent;" also "prophetic skill; the male spirit of a gens," originally "generative power" (or "inborn nature"), from PIE *gen(e)-yo-, from root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.
The sense of "characteristic disposition" of a person is from 1580s. The meaning "person of natural intelligence or talent" and that of "exalted natural mental ability, skill in the synthesis of knowledge derived from perception" are attested by 1640s.
also from late 14c.
I don't know if I have a guardian angel tutelary spirit but I like the idea of a eudemonic demon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4
I’ll get back to you tomorrow.
If you like, I'd love to hear the following explained in a bit more detail:
"There is an inevitability in human affairs derived from incentives."
I can’t say that I disagree with you but it looks like I come from a different point of you. I’m struggling for words, but my first thought is that I’m more of a fundamentalist ... meaning I tend to start with first principles pre-context. Back to the subject at hand I would say that the best of human nature is anything that leads to self-actualization, and the worst is anything that leads away from it.
Oops, different point of view (or frame of reference)
Yeah. Now I live at the end of the dirt road with the beavers and ravens and the big garden and no cell signal and hardly ever go out. My health comes from living outside the culture to the extent that I can; I can't face just going into town for all the mid-wit upper-wit bullshit.
I make my primary home in Central America now in a culture that is life enhancing rather than life draining.
I guess I’m not alone.
I feel some similarity with you. I'm by no means "super intelligent." The closest thing to a formal IQ test I've had was my high school SAT = 1280. That's far from the top (1600) but it did report me well into the 90th percentile. Not even gifted. A midwit, in other words. I "walked away" from at the least, a fully paid university education. I chose leisure, drugs and alcohol instead. I did "grow up" eventually, even got a degree or two but it was in my late 30s!
Good for you. To be clear I picked up the term “super intelligence” from the article. I do not think of myself that way. The subject of these two articles by Eugyppius is IQ and intelligence and I happen to have scored highly on that test many years ago. I don’t give it much weight. I can’t deny that I have skills that others don’t, but they are only tools. Intelligence is not a measure of character. My comments are driven by the fact that the analysis I find in these last two posts shed light on the curious course of my life. Thanks for your response. Best wishes.
Jolly Heretic covered this a few years back:
Why Are Intelligent People Conformist But Super-Intelligent People Non-Conformist?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAnozqk0i4
I have always described myself as a professional contrarian . . . and it's great to have an explanation why. I also have very few friends.
Shower more often! :)
I have found that people confuse a desire to ask questions and explore a topic in conversation with disagreement. It’s depressing how many people can’t deal with any discussion that doesn’t confirm prior beliefs. If you want friends, you have to find people who don’t take ideas personally. I don’t know why so many people make some idea like “vaccines are generally useful” part of their personalities. I guess they’re afraid if they dislodge an idea, they will have a blank spot in their world where the idea used to be. People seem more willing to be wrong than uncertain. But I think it’s because most are more comfortable in the middle of the pack. The heuristic of ‘I’ll see what everyone else is doing and do that’ often works. At least it keeps them feeling psychologically safe.
I think they consume a lot of propaganda and just regurgitate it... doesn’t make for interesting conversation
Ha!
That years spent gaining a 'higher education' is likely to result in More not Less groupthink tendencies is the great irony and paradox of 21st c. Western Liberalism; (in not ALL but the great MAJORITY of college graduates.) As I read it, this is what this post is saying. Saul Bellow saw it too: "a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep" . https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/
I would really like to see the research on that. I have not seen much anecdotally that intelligent people are less likely to be wrong. What I've noticed in America is the more titles under a persons name, the more they assume that they are right in every sphere. I think there's more than a but of the halo edfect going on.
Yes I agree 'smugness' might be an approriate term. I did read some research years back but I have no idea where I found it unfortunately. Just from my personal experience those I know who are highly qualified academics and doctors all took the jab whereas those with a more working class background seem to be the most skeptical. I don't think I can honestly say I personally know anyone who is super intelligent.
I have not watched the video, but I bet the reason why super intelligent people are non conformist is because they they aren't very good at conformity.
Great one, thanks for sharing.
fwiw: Eugyppius was just making a general statistical observation about how intelligence functions in our society, not about the actual nature of intelligence, etc. Eugyppius doesn't claim to know what the nature of intelligence itself is but many commentators feel that they do.
No one even understands themselves but they nonetheless tend to think they can understand others. Homo saps in a nutshell: always concerned with what the other guy has/does, not his own.
Eugyppius is one of my first picks to have my back in a data/logic back alley knife fight.
Let's hear it for the countless subgeniuses among us, especially ourselves, none of whom are as smart as they think they are! (They may be smarter or dumber but no one can measure themselves anymore than a ruler can measure itself.) Hooray for us!
https://youtu.be/hxZ-scE9mDk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AynXoLjYrKc
"Eugyppius is one of my first picks to have my back in a data/logic back alley knife fight." -- yes but people like Eugyppius, El Gato etc (not to mention the super analytical Ethical Sceptic) are powerless against a midwit. Let alone a scared-out-of-their-head-by-24/7media- fearporn midwit.
Sharp IQ tools do not penetrate dull(ed) minds.
If I could have a dollar for every time I was about to forward a substack to a scared-shitless cc120 IQ friend about to get boosted, only to think better of it.
One doesn't argue with ignorance. If necessary for survival, one kicks its ass. But looking down on the ignorant demeans us. We iz wutt we r, and few of us are any good at it... imo.
I like this: especially ourselves! But remember that Socrates was considered the smartest because he knew what he didn't know.
I see myself as a clueless cell in a vast organ called Terra in a vaster organ called the Milky Way, in a vast organ called a galactic cluster in a vast organ called the cosmos, within...?
I don't even know what I don't know. Ignorance cannot assess itself any more than a ruler can measure itself.
https://youtu.be/Cq-PuvBlFaM
One of your most important articles to date. As someone who has walked in HBD circles since 2012 most of this was already known to me, but you put it in a very clear way that I often have struggled to.
When it comes to the mid-wit I think nothing illuminates it more than the green energy argument.
The mid-wit knows that we need clean, efficient energy and yet, when you confront them with the reality that this is Nuclear Power and likely will be for the immediate future, they immediately switch-off. The infamous "NPC Stare" develops upon them. "Oh no, but <select as appropriate: [Chernobyl, toxic waste, Uranium imports, radiation poisoning the environment]>!"
It's unfortunate then that these people make substantial and long lasting policy positions such as: "Wind farms everywhere!" "Electric cars!" and "solar panels everywhere!"
I think there is a connection with the bureaucratic system we live under here. These are the people who are selected and favoured by this kind of regime.
Somewhere along the way, the 'energy' in "alternative energy" turned into "electricity delivered to our homes". (Goddam Tesla.)
Wind power is great... for pumping water and so forth. Solar power is great for some things.
Our main problem is we can't imagine life without gizmos run by electricity, and so we will likely soon find ourselves fouling the skies with wood and coal smoke while we trade dried fish and fur for slaves. Gonna be a difficult century except not so much for the Russian bloc, who froze and starved enough in the 20th century to understand why fossil fuels and nuclear power are necessary to continue our privileged technoospheric(sic) existence for another century or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGjojohhITs
Strictly speaking we don't "need" it, but it would of course be more desirable from most parties' point of view to have less-polluting energy if it could be had at completive cost to existing means of energy use. "Most" in this case, since it obviously the fossil fuel interests would be unhappy if their market share dropped. While I have no way to prove it of course (and it's probably not an original insight) if a workable new form of clean energy suddenly appeared -- say, nuclear fusion -- it's likely it would lead to severe economic problems, perhaps even a depression, since so much of the world's economy is inextricably tied to fossil fuels. And even if no such distortion occurred, under any realistic scenarios, it would take many decades to transition. In fact this latter limitation” puts the lie to" the Green advocates' urgency to meet a transition date of 2050 or whatever. Ridiculous. No way in hell it could be done, even if everyone were 100% on board with the pie-in-the-sky agendas.
You seem midwit conformist for ignoring solar thermal + salt ballast. It's pretty safe to ignore because for political reasons will probably never happen but still
"Socially and culturally, vaccination is for them; it is an activity in which they feel personally invested with which they especially identify."
Nailed it. That's all it is. It is basically another consumer identity to occupy. It's nice, it provides a sense of meaning on several levels. However, it's based less and less on anything concrete. You know how it goes from there.
The Bell Curve is real, and we ignore it at our peril.
It applies to many things in life including physical strength. 70% of people will be of average strength, 15% will be naturally piss-weak and 15% will be naturally freakishly strong. All parts of the continuum can get stronger from their respective starting points is the optimistic way of looking at it though. And strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general to quote "Starting Strength".
"Optimistic" is the operative word here. Your comments are largely correct. In most cases, physical strength is something that can be gained by exercises, working out, etc. Or equivalently, existing strength atrophies if not maintained by exercise. Alas, not all attributes are as mutable, however. Intelligence is one of those. [I'm not an expert, but I have read a couple books.] Eugyppius gave us the example of the genius who might choose between a job demanding great intellect vs. unskilled labor. True enough. But I note the converse is impossible: The ditch digger with an IQ of 85 is never going to be a doctor, lawyer, probably not even a restaurant manager, at least, not one you would want to hire probably. Whether we like it or not, intelligence is to some degree genetic and thus fixed. Clearly there are environmental factors too, especially developmental, as any child who snacked on lead paint chips could attest.
Optimism is all well and good, except when it becomes a dominant dogma in open denial of the underlying realities. To return to the bodybuilder example: In an optimum world, we would have a system that provided the best opportunity for self-development reasonably possible. But we live in a world where we must pretend, at least officially, that everybody can be an Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime. It just ain’t so.
I wholeheartedly second Matthew's sentiment.
Thanks for the support. If I could expand on this a bit, there is a real bell curve distribution of intelligence among people. I won't get into the alleged differences among races, which appear to be real at any rate. But there is an average intelligence, which we benchmark at 100. This is someone who can easily get by in a modern society as a skilled mechanic, heavy equipment operator, skilled office worker etc. They can use technology, but they are not going to invent or implement anything new. At the high end, you have the geniuses who study all manner of abstract things, like quantum mechanics. They not only come up with completely new ideas, they invent new fields of study. In between the average and the geniuses, you have the so called "mid-wits." At this level you have people who, while not inventing new fields of study, are capable of translating the genius stuff into workable solutions, which the geniuses often can't do. So far, so good for a functioning society.
But, what one has to keep in mind is that fully half the population is below that median of 100. A lot of these folks can still fall into the skilled or semi-skilled labor market, but many more cannot. These people are here, they're not getting any smarter and they're not going anywhere anytime soon, so society has to find something meaningful for them to do. That is not only the morally right thing to do, since everyone deserves an opportunity to pursue happiness as they see it. It is also a matter of security for the folks who occupy the to half of that distribution. People with nothing to do and a low IQ are a riot waiting to happen. Just look at American inner cities. And it can easily get uglier than it is now.
So, the imperative for our mid-wit managers should be to manage their given country such that the lower 50% of the distribution is given an opportunity to prosper to the extent of their abilities. Of course, you can't fix stupid as they say, so there will always be some hard core unemployable lower class. But that should be minimized.
I don't think I have to tell anyone that the powers that be in the mid-wit class of government and industry managers has been doing the exact opposite of this for at least the last 40 years, maybe longer. Exporting jobs that would be filled by the lower 50%, while importing more people that fall into that lower 50% is idiotic in the extreme.
So it is with mildly intelligent self-interested people. I myself fall somewhere in that mid-wit cohort, but at least I have the self awareness to understand these things.
Thank you for several incisive insights that are seldom spoken of. I would just expand on this. Another factor that's related are the vast differences in birth rates. The smartest factions (e.g. East Asians, Caucasians) tend to breed way below replacement rate, while the less intelligent are very fertile indeed. That, ladies and gentlemen, is to a large degree why North America and the EU are being overrun by brown and black migrants legal or otherwise. I wish that all those new entrants would become model Americans, Canadians, Germans, Brits, etc. but the data say otherwise. The underlying problems are even worse than that, if one takes into consideration WHY the third world population is booming. Essentially because they benefit from Western technology: medical care, food, and sanitation, to some degree. By all means denounce me as a racist and a white supremacist. There, do you feel better? I knew you would.
Permit me to close with a final note of pessimism: In coming decades the world is indeed going to live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse allegedly puts it.
You do know Nigerians perform higher than Asians in America? You do understand that you can't blanket Asians.
Midwits are not capable of breaking down the geniuses work or even understand it. They make assumptions.
Well eugyppius, your timing is interesting. Literally one day before your first Midwits post I watched a 90 minute documentary on how people, all kinds of people, are taken in by flim-flam marketing for things like miracle cures for male pattern baldness, weight loss pills and potions that promise losing 10lbs per day with no dieting or exercise, or that mass shootings are really "false flag" events or stock and crypto and other "investment opportunities."
It was very interesting. The film makers didn't put a lot of emphasis specifically on intelligence, except to say that people from janitors and DMV clerks to lawyers and doctors fall for these things time and time again. Instead they delved deeply into *why* people believe these things and fall for them.
The short answer is that people believe foolish things BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. And the reasons they want to believe mostly center on the fact that believing makes them *feel* better somehow. It's emotional, not intellectual. And this is exactly what I saw during the crazy circus of the 3 years of the pandemic. The media absolutely terrified a whole lot of people. Masks made them *feel* better and safer. Vaccs made them *feel* better and safer. Following government guidelines made them *feel* better and safer. But as we know it was all flim-flam and did nothing real.
The documentary was made in 2018, just so you know, long before covid. And I do agree that intelligence is a factor. But so is wanting to feel better when the television, the internet, the radio, and the newspaper are all screaming 24/7 OMG OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE OMG OMG!!!!
Not to mention physical reality (with the OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE OMG OMG!!!! jive).
This, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY
Modern human culture is not just irrational, but armed to the armpits. It is logically true that we need to feel good enough about life to want to live. Hard to do despite modern comforts and miracles. We become gullible and vulnerable when frightened and exhausted, and modern society is exhaustingly frightening even for so-called simpletons.
So we reach for things to soothe us. Drugs, 24/7 media, a psychedelic array of take-home food, your favorite song by your favorite band... the need for soothing is rational. The things we use to soothe ourselves are often not rational.
Music hath charms, they say:
https://youtu.be/SQNusGTKzxc
Music doth indeed have charms, especially Pat Metheney! I have loved his music from the beginning. Thank you for the reminder. 😊🌻
Your post is much appreciated and so very true. I worry a lot about what life will be like for my grandchildren.
I prefer female and some male vocalists. This is my favorite female vocalist for the last few years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOitELGlNlk
Indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQduVTEaOtM
Very good comment. Thank you.
Sunddenly death became a real concrete hypothesis for us all, but…
We are all going to die, aren’t we?
Life is only precious because it will end someday…. Forever would be unbearable.
I still cannot understand why people chose not to live (or hold precious life still) to avoid death from a almost nonexisting threat or peril, let alone being jabed with an obviously dubious potential dangerous potion.
Are we mainly midwits or halfwits when Fear takes command? What personal trait allows for Fear control? Certainly not itelligence!
If "midwit" meant a person of average IQ (actually it means someone a bit smarter), then at about 129, I would be what, perhaps a one-and-a quarter wit? 🤓
Well, I followed the concept of blind vanity associated with midwits and brougth it down to halfwits as a waste of “intelligence”, maybe?
Midwits: Someone who is around average intelligence but is so opinionated and full of themselves that they think they're some kind of genius. Midwits have a shallow understanding of things and at first can seem a bit smart, until you dig deeper and realize they're just posers.
Halfwits: If you describe someone as a halfwit, you think they have behaved in a stupid, silly, or irresponsible way. A halfwit is a person who has little intelligence.
Thank you 😊🌻
Remember, fear is visceral, emotional. Instinctual. Taken all the way into panic it can make people do incredibly stupid things. In panic no one can think, it's not possible. Panic is great if a hungry tiger is chasing you and you need to get away fast- not much need for thinking there. But a pandemic is a much different thing, not least of which is that there's nowhere to run.
For myself and my own reaction, all I can you is, I wasn't fearful and I never paniced. I was cautious, which is pretty much the polar opposite of panic. I'm old enough to remember other epidemics, mostly flu but also a few others. So I took a "wait and see" attitude. To this day I don't know anyone who died of covid.
As to the vaccs itself, the reason I never got it was mainly because of the TGN1412 'first in humans' clinical trial in 2006. I had seen a very good documentary about it and then also read as much as I could find about it. The short version of the story is that monoclonal antibodies biologic drug for the treatment of leukemia nearly killed everyone innthe trial that got the drug and not the placebo. So basically I was more afraid of the vaccs than I was of covid, because just like TGN1412 it had never been used in humans before, AND it was a rush job, "warp speed" and all that.
TGN1412 may have been a flop. However, it is NOT a gene therapy in the same sense that the mRNA jabs are. Based on a quick read, it's a monoclonal antibody externally produced, then injected into the patient. That's a rather different mechanism than hijacking the patients own cells with fake mRNA to induce the cells to produce a protein in-situ. In the latter case you are introducing a whole new level of complexity and the risk of unknown side effects.
Ok, maybe I wasn't clear when I said TGN1412 was a monoclonal antibodies biologic drug. I did say IT WAS A 'FIRST IN HUMANS' TRIAL. But it wasn't just a flop. All six of the study participants that received the drug were hospitalized in intensive care with cytokine storm that caused multiple organ failure and NEARLY DIED. One of the victims lost all his fingers and toes. Some of the others are severely and permanently disabled. It wasn't "a flop" it was a f*cking catastrophe that very nearly killed 6 people.
You missed my point completely. My point has *NOTHING* to do with the kind of drugs and the differences between them. My point is that *neither* TGN1412 or the covid vaccs HAD EVER BEEN USED IN HUMANS BEFORE. And with TGN1412 no one, not the doctors, developers, pharma company, NO ONE HAD ANY IDEA IT WAS GOING TO DO WHAT IT DID AND NEARLY KILL SIX PREVIOUSLY PERFRCTLY PEOPLE. And the truth is, no one knows what the covid vaccs is going to do to people over the long term. AND it was rushed with the orange ahole's "warp speed* bullshit. No one in their right mind would take a drug like that and certainly not me.
Couldn’t agree with you more, Bright Moon. I watched this play out daily for years, and it’s still going in a part of the population.
Yes. And the fact that it's still going on in part of the population is much scarier than covid itself. 😉🌻
I'm sorry but intelligent people understand that there are more important things to feeling better. Did you read the article above? The person leaves a job because they are unwilling to play a game that supports the unintelligent .
No need to be sorry. By the way, how are things on Jupiter?
Charles Murray is my go to expert on IQ -- he literally wrote the book on it, titled "The Bell Curve" in 1994. IQ is one of the most reliably measured human psychological traits, and it is highly correlated with success in life. But beyond that there is Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences -- which explains why a guy might have a very high "football IQ," but can't meet the entrance requirements for his hometown State University. Murray also says that extremely high IQ isn't required for success in most cognitively demanding fields. You just need to be smarter than some threshold IQ level, which he puts at around 120. In today's world it's really hard to know the truth about any issue no matter how smart your are, in particular one such as COVID where experts are telling us vastly different stories and we need to act urgently. I judged my susceptibility to COVID was low owing to a lack of serious health concerns, even though I'm a senior in age, and turned out I was correct. I got COVID but it was a mild case for me.
The thing about Murray is he mixes in a bunch of jackass nonsense like women underrepresented among famous mathematicians with zero effort to address confounds. He seems mostly troll
The academic world, USA at least, is way down the chute. There was a recent news item about Temple University. Many incoming freshmen struggle with math and require remedial classes. This would hardly be news if we were talking about "athletic scholarship" students with the IQ of a janitor. But no, in this case we are talking about STEM majors.
Steven Jay Gould wrote a refutation of the Bell Curve, The Mismeasure of Man
from Amazon
When published in 1981, The Mismeasure of Man was immediately hailed as a masterwork, the ringing answer to those who would classify people, rank them according to their supposed genetic gifts and limits.
And yet the idea of innate limits—of biology as destiny—dies hard, as witness the attention devoted to The Bell Curve, whose arguments are here so effectively anticipated and thoroughly undermined by Stephen Jay Gould. In this edition Dr. Gould has written a substantial new introduction telling how and why he wrote the book and tracing the subsequent history of the controversy on innateness right through The Bell Curve. Further, he has added five essays on questions of The Bell Curve in particular and on race, racism, and biological determinism in general. These additions strengthen the book's claim to be, as Leo J. Kamin of Princeton University has said, "a major contribution toward deflating pseudo-biological 'explanations' of our present social woes."
Not that it isn't refreshing that people are discussing this taboo subject. I think there are other perhaps hidden variables. Ann Masten, the world's leading researcher on resilience, finds it incontrovertible that cognitive ability is correlated with resilience. That might predict conformity especially in face of purported pathogens since the Head Girls have developed without much capacity for resilience perhaps? I'd test them for disgust sensitivity also. And add to the Big 5 a Cluster B test, including sociopathy.
And, according to Iain McGilchrist, in The Matter with Things, testing favors the skills of the left hemisphere of the brain and the taxonomic skills, the "scientific spectacles," that technological culture values. He also discusses the Reverse Flynn Effect, that something about our environments is lowering IQ. We'll end up with the globe like Elizabeth Nietzsche's eugenical colony in Paraguay, where the slack-jawed and inbred remain, if we don't allow this to be researched, so I think such a discussion is great!
"The Mismeasure of Man" published in 1981 doesn't refute "The Bell Curve" published in 1994. I haven't read Gould, but have read much about him -- especially in Steven Pinker's books. I think the left's work to deny the existence of real, measurable IQ is one of the great examples of a disinformation campaign. It attempts to impose the "blank slate" theory, which holds that human cognitive capacity is solely a function of environment with no hereditary component. This is, of course, ridiculous. The destructive side of "blank slate" thinking comes about in our education system, where we behave as if every child can be raised to any level of intellectual achievement via dedicated and clever teaching methods, lots of money, and devoted teachers. There are many popular movies that "prove" this is true. But it's not, and we waste huge resources in the pursuit of "test scores" which stubbornly refuse to reflect the effort put into seeing them go up, not down. I watched a video recently of Jordan Peterson who said IQ is one of the few human traits that we can measure accurately, the result of 150 years of research and huge data sets accumulated mostly by the U.S. armed forces. So I'll stick with Charles Murray and "The Bell Curve" despite the protestations of Gould.
I can't cite you a source, but I recall reading that Gould's "Mismeasure" was denounced as fraudulent. In any event, I did skim that book, and Gould proudly touts his liberal/Marxist heritage from the opening.
The results of the study are not surprising at all. IQ tests are designed to provide good grades to people that agree to learn whatever they have been told they should learn. It is no wonder that when they are told to get vaccinated ASAP, those with the higher grades comply faster with the mandate.
Compliance does matter here. But I do think IQ tests do measure something real.
Yes - since they moved away from language-based assessment, they are a decent measure of pattern recognition ability, which correlates well with what we think of as intelligence. It's a propensity which can be honed through practice, but I'm not sure how much it can be taught.
Spicy meme!
i only realise this now lol
High IQ and common sense are probably not correlated. In fact an awful lot of nonsense can only be "understood" by people with high IQ, as shitlibs are so fond of informing us. Independent thinking (I guess in the 4 factor model, this would be "disagreeableness") is also not correlated with a capacity for abstract thought. When you find disagreeable smarties, they rarely have jobs in positions of authority for reasons you say.
Of my intelligent friends who took the vax, one is a perfect embodiment of head girl syndrome: agreeable, doesn't like thinking independently, defers to experts, feels smug about it. Smart, but doesn't want to think. A couple of others are absolutely excellent researchers who nerded out hard on MRNA vaccine propaganda as if it were actual data. They still can't admit they got owned, though they stopped getting shots at least. I looked at the data that was available (my job title is "data scientist" more or less) and thought it was a no-brainer. Not a dangerous disease from the cruise ship data available in April, and even the pfizer data indicated early on that it was a fairly dangerous and useless vaccine for a fairly innocuous disease. Apparently nobody else looked at the appendix where the effectiveness number came from.
TLDR 1-factor models of human behavior are rarely going to work.
I don't know what "common sense" is, but I suspect it's not a coherent concept. I don't think any psychometricians, in studying intelligence, are proposing a one-factor model of human behaviour, and that's definitely not my aim here either.
There was a common pattern in physics grad school where the undoubtedly high IQ Chinese grad student from rice patty village would enter experimental physics lab and be completely unable to debug anything or make anything work unless it was described in the instructions. The redneck who used to work on cars and was dumber on tests could always make the experimental apparatus go. That's common sense, and if psychologists weren't WEIRD retards they could devise a test for it..
IQ tests for various kinds of memory and ability to manipulate abstractions: that's an interesting factor which tells you something about brain capabilities under test: doesn't mean you can do anything with your impressively capable brain. Which is why Mensa international is a club for losers, not a group of people changing the world.
this forum is full of excellent people, but I find that there are no philosophers here, especially ones that are pre-Enlightenment specialists. Aristotle etc. Psychology is a post-Enlightenment idea and is based on positivist ideas (falsificationism also belongs to positivism: see Duhem/Quine). Common sense is the household variety of Aristotle's practical wisdom and therefore the polar opposite of IQ. I once asked our bookclub (most meetings are on some outdoor shooting range) why nobody even considered taking the gene serum. We are a very mixed bunch: profs, salespeople, craftsmen, housewives) and the only common denominator was an independence: we simply didn't care what "everybody" says - we look at things before we form a belief.
Good summary