Irony is, those in need of deprogramming the most are the ones into programming. How is it even possible that people that are supposed to be so intelligent/logical/rational are actually this gullible to state’s propaganda that they believe it without a shred of doubt.
Intelligence and political awareness aren’t correlated. Confrontation with politics in everyday life and political awareness are.
Maybe a hot take, but we really shouldn’t be glorifying intelligence the way we do, it has a lot of resemblance to fascist ideology.
The spread in intelligence really isn’t that wide. People without clinical impairments or other disorders can specialize in practically whatever field they like. It’s primarily just a function of wealth and mental health. What distinguishes ‘intelligent’ people’ from the less intelligent is that, for whatever reason, they have an edge in learning speed. That’s it. They’re not transcendental beings who somehow have more access to ‘the truth’ of the universe.
Of course, on the very rare occasion, there are people who excel at very specific tasks but even then that says nothing about their ability to do anything else.
I think intelligence is a completely bullshit concept. There is no such thing as being smarter than someone else.
I wouldn’t go that far. Intelligence is still a physical phenomenon produced by highly complex and somewhat varied systems. There’s going to be different levels of intelligence, like there are different levels of empathy, of strength, of immunity, and so on. Strong evidence would be needed to counter this. That doesn’t mean people don’t exaggerate these differences, look at them too uncritically, or misunderstand both what they are and their origins (which are mostly in child-rearing).
What is more likely bullshit is the concept of “general intelligence” or “G”, which is basically an illusion of statistical question-begging that has been very useful to phrenologists and basically no one else.
As far as I understand it, “intelligence” is completely on the “nurture” end of “nature vs nurture”. It’s a skill that can be trained in a lot of different ways, but also requires good sources and good conditions to flourish.
Just like it’s easier to get stronger if you eat well and have enough time to train, it’s easier to get “smarter” if you have your basic needs met and time to study and practice. Capitalist society strives to deny those conditions to the people.
And even then rich people so very often have decomposed shit for brains, because they just steamroll through life by having cash and rich friends.
Yeah, though just like physical fitness it’s wildly easier to be high-performing if you start that process of training while you are a child rather than later in life.
It’s pure white supremacist ideology
This makes so much sense. I came into software development after being poor, and that allowed me to insulate myself against some of the crap the lifelong developers buy into.
I grew up middle/upper class, but did not conform to capitalist ideas after high school (Went to college and got a psych degree, was super into science regardless of pay, graduated with no “marketable skills”), of course ended up poor. I went back to college for C.S (Which is lucky I even had that opportunity), bought into the capitalist mindset for awhile, and now I make good money. But that class consciousness (I just never had a term for it until about 6 months ago) never went away, and now that I’ve discovered what communism actually is, I feel stuck, surrounded by a culture I no longer respect.
Great comment, especially the last sentence of the first paragraph.