Donald J Trump: The Dullest Knive In The Drawer (BUT - - -)

"But hold on. I ask myself: How could Trump have become president, and now clinch the Republican nomination for the presidency for a third time, if he doesn’t have something in the brain bank? Even if Trump doesn’t read, can’t follow a logical argument, and has the attention span of a fruit fly, I keep believing he must have some intelligence.

"Well, it turns out there’s another form of intelligence, called 'emotional intelligence.'

"Emotional intelligence is a concept developed by two psychologists, John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire and Yale’s Peter Salovey, and popularized by Dan Goleman in his 1996 book of the same name.

"Mayer and Salovey define emotional intelligence as the ability to do two things: 'understand and manage our own emotions,' and 'recognize and influence the emotions of others.'

"True, Trump hasn’t displayed much capacity for the first. He’s thin-skinned, narcissistic, and vindictive. As dozens of Republican foreign policy experts have put it: 'He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood. He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate criticism.'

"Okay, but what about Mayer and Salovey’s second aspect of emotional intelligence — influencing the emotions of others?

"This is where Trump’s brain outperforms the brains of ordinary mortals. He knows how to manipulate people. He has an uncanny ability to discover their emotional vulnerabilities — their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and darkest desires — and use them for his own purposes.

"To put it another way, Trump is an extraordinarily talented conman."

Click on the link below for the full picture of his stupidity:

Seriously, again, how dumb is Trump?

AI, Consciousness, And Intelligence

"Artificial Intelligence continues to be the talk of the town, but how intelligent are they really? Come to think of it, what do we mean by "intelligence" anyway? In this video, we'll look at IQ tests for humans and for computers and see how current AIs have scored."

Click on the link below for an interesting video analyzing the concepts of intelligence and consciousness:

It's not AI consciousness that worries me, but their intelligence

Why Is There Still Religion And Medical Quackery?

The major religions of today began when written communication was rudimentary and well before modern science evolved. It was a period of ignorance and superstition:

The Growth of Knowledge

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INTELLIGENCE: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

KNOWLEDGE: facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education.

SCIENCE: knowledge about the natural world that is based on facts learned through experiments and observation.

UNDERSTANDING: the capacity for rational thought or inference or discrimination.

IGNORANCE: lack of knowledge or information.

SUPERSTITION: a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation.

QUACKERY: dishonest practices and claims to have special knowledge and skill in some field, typically medicine.

RELIGION: many definitions, but usually includes belief in spiritual beings/the supernatural/a God.

Are Atheists More Intelligent Than Christians?

There have been several decades of research claiming to support the hypothesis that atheists are more intelligent than Christians. However, there is a growing consensus that this research is not measuring intelligence, which is controversial in itself, but greater dependence on intuition rather than logic and reason in thinking and decision-making by the religious (link)(link). In addition, there is criticism of the methods used and the interpretation of the results in these, and other, studies of intelligence (link).

Given the above, some are concluding that appropriate cognitive training may help in changing the way the religious think (link). Seems like support for the teaching of critical thinking skills to me. Albert Einstein agreed: 

"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."

What Is Your View Of Intelligence?

"What does it mean when someone calls you smart or intelligent? According to developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, it could mean one of eight things. In this video interview, Dr. Gardner addresses his eight classifications for intelligence: writing, linguistic, mathematics, music, spatial, kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal."

Click on the link below for a broad and enlightened opinion regarding intelligence:

8 Intelligences: Are You a Jack of All Trades or a Master of One?

Intelligence Is No Protector Against Magical Thinking

"In this article, we explore the more circumscribed question of whether and to what extent the Nobel Prize, conceptualized as a partial but imperfect proxy of scientific brilliance, is incompatible with irrationality. To do so, we draw on case studies of several Nobel-winning scientists who appear to have succumbed to the Nobel Disease. In doing so, we remain cognizant of the inferential limitations of case studies: They are of unknown representativeness, and they can be readily cherry picked to support one’s hypotheses. Still, case studies can often be helpful in generating hypotheses to be investigated in more systematic studies. In addition, they can sometimes afford existence proofs—demonstrations that a given phenomenon can occur. In the case of the Nobel Disease, the capsule case histories we present strongly suggest that intellectual brilliance can coexist with yawning gaps in skeptical thinking."

Click on the link below:

The Nobel Disease: When Intelligence Fails To Protect Against Irrationality

The Land Mines of Addressing The Role of Genes In Intelligence

"'I’m afraid that this will be a distraction for society,' he said. An obsession with slippery genetic predictions could turn people’s attention away from other things that influence how children do in school and beyond—things like their family’s wealth, the stress in their neighborhoods, the quality of the schools themselves."

Genetic Intelligence Tests Are Next to Worthless

Sam Harris VS Ezra Klein Regarding Genetics & IQ

One of my favorite podcasts is Sam Harris' Waking Up.  I have known for years that he is controversial for some of his conservative views. But, he really is difficult to pin down politically. That said, there is a major firestorm going on after *he and Ezra Klein debated recently. The topic of controversy was regarding the role of genetics in IQ: Harris supports the significant influence of genetics and Klein does not.  What is the truth?

Here are several links presenting research in this area: link; link; link; link; link.  In studying the topic, I have come to the conclusion that, if genetics do play a role, it is minor compared to the role of history and environment/culture in which humans evolved.  Thus, I do not accept Sam Harris' view of the importance of genetics and IQ.

(*The debate was over the writings of Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein in their book The Bell Curve.  This article challenges the sources of its data, and this link to Wikipedia presents more criticism of the book and its findings.)

 

Fish Are Intelligent

"Forming cognitive maps and recalling them weeks later illustrates more than a frillfin goby’s prodigious talent for avoiding a leap of faith. It also exposes the human prejudice to underestimate creatures that we don’t understand."

Fish Can Be Smarter Than Primates

Intelligence And Education Don't Necessarily Make One Wise

"We should not idolize or glorify stupidity as somehow virtuous when it can be avoided so easily. We have the technical and social means to educate, to develop our capacities for critical reasoning, and to appreciate the wealth of readily available knowledge around us, free to consume in many cases, and open for the curious, regardless of IQ, to explore."

Stupid Is

Are you an intellectual? It doesn't take what you think.

Extreme Intelligence Has Some Downside

"You might think life would be easier, happier, and infinitely more fulfilling if only you could rack up a few more IQ points.But that's hardly the case, as evidenced by the 100-plus answers on a Quora thread titled, 'When does intelligence become a curse?'"

6 surprising downsides of being extremely intelligent

A Pejorative Term That Needs To Be Retired

'The late Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris argued that smart people can make the worst employees, in part because they’re not used to dealing with failure or criticism. Multiple studies have concluded that interpersonal skills, self-awareness, and other “emotional” qualities can be better predictors of strong job performance than conventional intelligence, and the College Board itself points out that it has never claimed SAT scores are helpful hiring filters."

Applies To Most Who Accept Any Claim Without Evidence

"A large proportion of the public – over a quarter according to a Gallup survey in the US – believe that humans have psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance, even though mainstream science says there is no evidence that these powers exist. It might be tempting for sceptics to put this down to a lack of general intelligence or education on the part of the believers, but in fact past research has failed to support this interpretation."

Why do so many people believe in psychic powers?

What Does It Mean To Be Smart?

I don't consider myself more intelligent than the religious, as I know many religious folks who are more intelligent than I am. However, I did become an agnostic atheist by overcoming the instinct of religion through science-based thinking. I think that the word intelligence may be misused here.