Zebra, when I say ignorant I am implying a derogatory term for those who are “lacking in knowledge” yet speak with misguided authority.
I would like to find a correlation between being nice. i.e. amiable, pleasant, kind and link that to certain traits people demonstrate.
Of course there are a wide array of variables and factors that will have to be looked at. I am seeing from the responses to this thread that people are tending to think there is no correlation between intelligence and being nice or mean. And if anything people seem to be stating that they know quite a few people who are very intelligent yet not-so-nice. So on the flip side, I’d like to see if there is a correlation between that. I need to come up with certain parameters before a study could be conducted, but I do not see it as unresearchable. I think h.sapiens put it best by stating:
I think that if your looking at the top 10 - 20 percentile, then yes, they in general will be nicer than normal. However, if you looking at the ultra smart 0.1% of the population, the results will be quite different. Throwing modest to the wind, I would say that I’m easily in the top 1% and I tend to fall into the “evil bastard” category for smartness.
I find it fun to run people around in rings for kicks and to feed them blatent mistruths in order to see them spout it out later. However, there are other very smart people who I know that are much nicer.
The thought process that seems to animate this thread is the reason that Ann Coulter sells books.
Back in the dim past, some insecure person decided that rather than debate someone who disagreed with them, they would just label them “ignorant” and evade debate. So over time “ignorant” became synonymous with all the other epithets that insecure people like to throw at those who disagree with them: mean spirited, selfish, etc.
So the problem as I see it here, is that the OP is conflating the meanings of ignorant: ignorant as lack of intellegence and ignorant as big meany who disagrees with me.
The OP deduces that “IF ignorant == unintelligent AND ignorant == mean THEN unintelligent == mean”
Sorry, I don’t buy it at all, and the need of people here to equate innate intelligence with their beliefs strikes me as silly and elitist.
This is far from being the first post along the lines of “Does being intelligent = having X outlook or trait?”
The speaking with misquided authority part of your definition is a bit out of place. (personally I call those people Posers or Liars)
There is no reason, in my mind to make ignorant a derogatory term. Making the word ignorant a derogatory tem when all it means is a lack of knowledge puts uneducated, under-educated and inexperienced people in a bad light. Would you pick up a newborn baby and call it ignorant? You would be correct in doing so but the parents probably wouldn’t ask you to be a godparent anytime soon.
Not really Karl. That is not what I am saying at all. If you care to reread the thread, and look at what I am saying making this deduction would not even be plausible.
I am simply saying that I find that most of the people I associate with who are “nice” generally know how to conduct themselves in a manor befitting someone who is pretty intelligent. Not an astrophysicist mind you, but certainly not considered a dummy.
Furthermore, I have met so many people who most would consider nice, and who are pretty smart for me to deduce that there is some correlation. Understand? This has nothing to do with conflating the meaning of a word into something I’d like it to mean.
Just curious, looking at your post count and the year you subscribed, should I deduce that you have an alternate ego on the boards and only use racekarl when you see fit? Or should I deduce that you thought this thread good enough to post on when your average post is around 20 per year?
You’re stipulating a generalization from a limited sample.
You associate with nice people, who also are intelligent. Therefore all nice people must be intelligent and all intelligent people must be nice. Not nice people , therefore, must be not intelligent and not intelligent people, therefore, must be not nice.
I would stipulate that there are four groups of people in the subset: Intelligent, nice, not intelligent, not nice. You can have intelligent/nice, not intelligent/nice, intelligent/not nice and not intelligent/not nice.
Educated (but not necessarily intelligent) people should be expected to demonstrate a higher level of social skills when you first meet them. This is due mostly to their experience in complex social situations. Poorly educated persons might be more cautious when they first encounter a person or situation that’s new to them, and thus appear to be not so nice.
The above might explain why “intelligent” (read educated) people seem at first to be nicer than either less intelligent or ignorant persons.
It’s been my experience that true “niceness” is not a function of intelligence. There are some pretty snotty sum-bitches out there that have been repeatedly told how smart they are until they have fallen into the fallacy of believing it.
Intrinsically nice…nope, it is something they have learned throughtout their life in their interactions with other people. Are they all nice? Nope. Are those that at first appear nice really nice? Nope, hypocrisy is a learned trait, and one that intelligent people with social skills use in their advantage. That way they can appear nice, without being a nice person in reality.
I personally think that being mean does not preclude someone from being very intelligent, although a very intelligent person will likely know how to disguise that meaness as much as possible, if he/she wants to.
Philosphr, you claim that I read your posts wrong, but I respectfully disagree:
and:
When I read that line, I see you use the words intelligent and ignorant on two different sides of the “equation” and mean and ignorant on the same side. So either part of your statement is simply a tautology (intelligent = not ignorant) or you are implying that ignorant and mean share a common thread of meaning.
As far as my post count goes, I do not have an alter ego. In 2000 I helped start a small software company that began very well, leaving me little time to read or post to SDMB. Now that the company is winding down, I find myself with much more time on my hands.
This is a question I’ve thought about for years, mostly because of one woman I went to grad school with. She was very nice to the right people–the ones with the power to further her career–and cold and heartless to the peons who couldn’t really do anything for her. She was hot, too, and she knew just when to flash her legs in front of the right people, and when to be demure and conservative in front of the other people. Her research was not bad, but not outstanding. There were many others in the department I thought were better thinkers and better writers, but she now has a full professorship in a good university, and lots of those better thinkers are slogging away at underappreciated jobs. Me, for instance.
I always wanted to believe that she just wasn’t very smart, and that’s why she wasn’t nice. (Not nice to ordinary people, I mean.) Now I’m not so sure. She wasn’t intelligent enough to follow my values, which include being at least as kind to the weak and powerless as to the powerful. But is that really a lack of intelligence? After all, she’s doing great now–she pulls down three times my salary and does half as much work. She has the admiration and envy of many people. She’s still pretty hot (though I’ll admit that I keep hoping she’ll suddenly start to age badly). How stupid could she be? I must reluctantly admit that she’s pretty smart, if not particularly ethical. I’ll also admit that I hope she’s not all that happy, though I guess that makes me not so nice. (But does it make me stupid?)
I don’t know. As much as I’d like to believe that intelligent people are nice, I have to admit that I’ve known lots of really good, kind, not-so-bright people, and lots of really smart jerks. Several not-so-bright jerks too, and a precious few good, kind, intelligent people. So I guess I’m with kunilou. Four subsets, many possible combinations. No necessary correlation between intelligence and niceness.
