the morality of intelligence

Great Debates
1

Here’s something which interests me as a lifelong student of ethics.

What is the morality of intelligence? Are people morally required to make choices using the height of their intellectual capacity? Does an above-average IQ person owe it to society to use said IQ to its maximum?

We have a tendency to assume that if someone does something wrong, but does it out of stupidity rather than malice, it’s not as morally bad. But what if they could have been smarter? What if the person just couldn’t be bothered to think about the question very hard, and made a stupid decision because of it? Stupidity is definitely the reason their decision was poor. There was no malice. Just stupidity.

Where does that place the person, morally? Is the wrong act just as wrong as if it was deliberately chosen because of the decision not to try very hard to come up with a better choice?

These are the thoughts that insure my privacy at parties. :smiley:

2

Given such events as the Holocaust or other genocides of the 20th century, I’d say that complacent following is possibly one of the greater proven evils of the land.

But at the same time, I wouldn’t put that blame on an individual who succumbed to it. People who blindly follow without going through a basic BS check are either incapable of doing better, or simply never received the proper schooling. We have to hope that it is the latter, and if it is I’d have to put that as one of the greater needs of modern society, to figure out what sort of schooling most causes your average person to logically consider the word of authority.

3

There is a schooling I have undergone, which is highly recommendable, yet could not be imposed on anyone because you need to have an elder brother to impose it on you.

We could call it the “syndrome of the cadet brother”, which is caused by the presence, during early childhood, of a sort of own private “Big Brother” who, in turn, is likely to suffer from the “elder brother’s attitude” caused by a distinct advantage in terms of hight, weight, strength, and level of intellectual development, making him believe he’s got unrestricted authority on you.

The challenge for me was to learn, from a very young age on, how to oppose my brother’s undeserved authority alias ruthless power.

In the adult world, this has helped me identify and defeat people claiming to be authorities, whereas in actual fact they’re just tenants of power, as are the vast majority of impostors among our so-called political, military, and administrative authorities.

My personal definition of the difference between the concepts of authority and power may be useful to clarify the antinomy inherent to this pair of often confused terms:

**Power uses the threat of repression to enforce its will, causing anxious obedience of its subordinates.
**
Authority creates incentives through exemplary attitude and behavior, to promote emulation among its supporters.

So I think we have to either “recycle” our authorities, or get the average person through some sort of schooling in the way of confronting him or her with a virtual or real “Big Brother” from early childhood on – something akin to our immunity system getting more resilient through infantile illnesses.

P.S. Moreover I’m left-handed!

4

IQ does not give a numerical measure of a person’s ability to correctly perform all mental functions. In fact, Alfred Binet, the inventor of IQ tests, specifically warned against interpreting IQ scores that way. IQ measures “cleverness” on a series of basic tasks such as solving mazes and finding patterns.

Given that, it’s dangerous to assume that simply predicting good outcomes when people use their intellect fully is dangerous. I would say that it depends on the circumstances. Obviously a person who becomes a brain surgeon or a rocket scientists has made an implicit agreement to use their intellect to the maximum in certain directions while they’re on the job. On the other hand, I don’t see how there can be any moral imperative to use maximum intellect at all times and places. After all, there isn’t even widespread agreement on what “maximum intellect” would mean.

5

“Owe it to society”?

First you have to show me that anyone “owes” anything to society. Then you have to show me how we can have an obligation that we haven’t chosen. Then you have to show me how society is responsible for someone’s intelligence, so that he owes it something in return. Then you have to show my how anyone has the right to decide how another person uses his intelligence.

6

To somewhat decorate the house that ITR Champion built: Exactly. Intelligence could rightfully be explained as our ability to learn - but WHAT you learn, and how you exert that knowledge outward (actions and decisions) is just a completely different cup of tea.

Was Hitler smart? I would argue that he was. How does that interpret into his actions? It doesn’t.

There is no correlation between intelligence and good/bad decisions. We decide (which is arguable in itself) based on our experiences and how we assimilated/interpreted those experiences. That interpretation is skewed by what our experiences have been thus far.

We could go on for days, but the end result is (IMO), most of the world isn’t bad, they just don’t know any better. Common sense isn’t as common as most think (or would hope). Poor judgement is based on poor analysis, which is based on improperly interpreted information processed by a brain of any given capacity.

Or something like that

7

And, adding another room, intelligence is not going to prevent the influence of other things on a decision - be it hormones, upbringing, or genetics. We’re not robots who can reduce our clock speed to reduce our intelligence. Smart people can do nutty things in order to get laid every bit as much as stupid people.

8

Well legally we owe society a “reasonable/ordinary person standard” of intelligence. If you do something that a reasonable person in your situation would not have done, then you’d be liable for your actions. What is reasonable is mostly determined by a jury.

The way the courts answer the OP is that if you have higher intelligence, then you are obligated to use it. However, people of lower intelligence are held to the same standard as people of average intelligence, mostly because you don’t want people using that excuse.

If we ignore the law and focus on just morality, I would say that people should put in the same amount of effort into preventing harm as they would expect others to put in.

9

I’d argue that it’s the moral obligation of a doctor to severely stress the avenue he’d take in a given treatment over the objections of less informed family members. He/she doesn’t have the right to impose that treatment, but giving those concerned two options with equal weight when an informed opinion knows they are not is unethical.

Of course morality depends on the reality that an individual can perceive either through intelligence or another faculty. Is running over someone in a blizzard or sunny day more forgivable?

10

A laptop. A wireless connection to the Internet. A Duggar-sized family on a island in the south Pacific. Yep. That’s all you need. In other words, intuitively, no one owes anything to society (take that Ayn Rand).

You can put demands on society. For example, ordering stuff via Amazon.com from your remote island. You have money because you have a business that can be sustained from a remote location. So you demand, but you don’t provide. And it works.

11

Hmmm. In retrospect, I should have known that basing my question on that big bugbear known as “intelligence” was a bad, bad idea.

In fact, it could be argued that I should have used more of my intelligence. :slight_smile:

Regardless, let’s try to stay focused, folks, and not get sidelined into libertarian wackiness or analyzing Binet.

So let’s scratch out the word “intelligence” and replace it with the vague but serviceable “capacity”, to mean, roughly, any sort of human potential. It could be “intelligence” or “talent” or even just good ol’ muscular horsepower.

Can you be judged morally deficient if you could have done better, but didn’t?

12

Imagine an above-average IQ guy who has invented an aircraft allowing individuals to move around in the airspace as freely and safely as birds and insects: is he compelled to hand his invention over to society?

Looking at the current state of society as represented by its adult members, I would say no: they don’t deserve such a quantum leap in individual mobility.

But then I think of the children: they are innocent and they are indeed the future. Hence, I think (because I’m this lucky inventor as you might know or have guessed) that I owe my invention at least to the part of society represented by the children.

Yet, nobody being an island, the question of individual “duty of intelligence” should be enlarged to collectivities of above-average individuals.

Well then! Here’s a starter for further discussions: remember Khrouchtchev’s famous sarcasm (citing Lenine) thrown at Western powers: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”.

Awaiting comments before continuing…

13

I’m never totally comfortable with questions of what people “deserve”. Were I said inventor, I’d give my invention to the world, only retaining enough interest in it to assure me a modest income for life and enough power over how the invention is used to make sure it doesn’t get locked away somewhere.

I can’t see why only the above-average “deserve” certain things. All else being equal, a stupid person deserves nice things as much as a smart one.

This does lead to the set of issues posed by my OP. You’re touching on social justice, “people getting what they deserve”.

What is it about “the current crop of adults” that makes you think they are undeserving of your invention? I’d caution against drawing enormous conclusions based on the actions of a few.

I do not consider myself qualified to judge humanity. I could not possibly know enough about enough people to even have an educated guess. And there’s always the question of basis of comparison. What other sentient tool-using species is doing better than us? Or worse, for that matter?

Like Nietzsche said (I am paraphrasing) "There’s two possible parties capable of judging life. The living, who are biased, and dead, who are unavailable. "

14

Sure it is, or at least it can. There are techniques that an intelligent person can learn, which allow him or her to retain self-control even when hormones gush. An intellectual understanding of our upbringing and the biases it imposed upon us can assist us in minimizing the influence that upbringing, and allow us to build a mental framework on a more universal set of ideas. As for genetics I’m not convinced that is has much effect, but even if genetic predispositions do exist there’s no reason why intelligence couldn’t overcome them.

One might well argue that the most important function of a proper education is to do precisely what you say cannot be done.

15

My friend, I went to college for four years in the very center of stereotypical high intelligence, and if we were more rational than anywhere else it escaped me.

There is an interesting chapter in Predictably Irrational about asking a Berkeley student if would do various dreadful things. This was done in a quiet setting, and again when he was being aroused by a porn movie. His answers were very different. I’ve known lots and lots of very smart people, and hormones trump brains any day of the week. That’s how we’ve evolved.

16

I don’t have to give my invention to the world to have my modest old age pension granted to me for life…

Basically, I don’t have to sell my invention to anybody likely to lock it away, i’d just sell lincenses. The problem is the following: unless I decide to withhold the invention from the public, I can only get the power over how it is used by having it patented, which amounts to $100,000+ for worldwide protection. And even once protected, I would need still much more money to industrialize it. If I leave it dormant, anybody can claim a license from me after three years, and then I may loose the power over how it is used. It’s a virtual vicious circle.

You may not see why, yet reality is such that small but powerful groups of above-average individuals do not only try to buy and withhold major inventions from the public, they also withhold their own better knowledge from the masses they think are stupid and therefore not aware of being flouted, as well as from those among the crowd they think are smart enough to make unwanted use of it.

I can give you a practical example of my country fellow Daniel Rochat, who went to the States to found the Logitech company, which means he is likely to abide by the rules of above-average American global players like Microsoft and Intel, who in turn are deemed to comply to restrictions imposed by higher lobbies, e.g. the Pentagon (still considering the PC and likewise its peripherals as strategic products) or the so-called fourth power, i.e. the press.

An here is the example with the press tycoons as the group of above-average individuals:

Besides the historical the mouse, Logitech developed the Scanman about ten to fifteen years ago, only to withhold it from the market a few years later. Just imagine the level of sophistication it could have reached by now: it would come with an LCD-display for immediate rereading of any scanned newspaper text column, along with the possibility to highlight certain text elements or even to make annotations via an included small keyboard, small rubber rollers with built-in micro-motors and planetary reduction gears would ensure straight and steady scrolling; state of the art battery and memory would make it into a pocket archive safely hosting thousands of selected newspaper articles, i.e. evidence the press tycoons might prefer not to be easily retrievable.

What I’m rather touching on here, is the relationship between the elite and the masses. There was a time when the elite were called the nobility, and I do believe that some of them deserve this distinction well. Today this social class has disappeared and we are left with a rather inconsistent Nobel price, a mere linguistic opportunity exploited by a certain Mr. Nobel who moreover invented the rather dangerous stuff called dynamite…

Since my endeavor has always been to reach some purposeful conclusion after any discussion, I would suggest that we try hard to restore nobility as a social class of individuals of undoubted probity, be it only for the sake of creating an opportunity for inventors to confidently disclose major inventions to them without having to fear bad faith.

After the disastrous new rich… the salutary new noble!

May the discussion launched by your OP challenge some above-average readers to share their opinions on a subject matter deemed to address the very fundamentals of human society.

17

I think we share somewhat similar societal and instinctive obligations to try to do good and avoid harm according to our capacities. That approximates a “yes” to the OP. Of course, there are all sorts of obstacles to evaluating how well we’re doing.

18

Sorry for the three following errors in my previous post:

I apologize for further quoting myself, but I just would like to show how MichaelJohnBertrand snatches an idea from me to develop it into some rather dull intellectual fantasy on his newly opened thread on Aristocracy.

(Quoting myself, edivincison):

“Undoubted probity” and “salutary new nobility” is not exactly what MichaelJohnBertrand proposes in his new thread on Aristocracy – and my challenging appeal to “some above average readers” has obviously been heard by no other than himself…

19

Actually, I’ve had this “new aristocracy” idea for quite a while now, although you do deserve some credit for reminding me of it and causing me to dig through my dusty archives and dig it out.

20

To your first sentence, I entirely agree. One doesn’t expect to find the most rational behavior at institutions of higher learning. The material offered at such institutions these days has little in common with what most people, at most times, would consider an education. Hence that tells us little about whether education can contribute to self-control. Likewise with that study at Berkeley. I was unimpressed with that chapter, and with the book as a whole. Some students at Berkeley choose not to exercise self-control when aroused, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Some students at Berkeley choose not to learn algebra, but no one thinks that’s impossible.

The bottom line is that many people from many places and times have been able to subjugate the influence of both their hormones and their upbringing. Hence it’s possible to do so, regardless of some people choosing not to do so.