Genuine curiosity: I’ve seen piles of "my superior intellect" and "normies would never understand", so I wanted to ask if your answer was sarcastic. If it isn’t, are you saying that you identify with Rick? Or something different?
If you believe psychology and IQ are nonsense, here’s a comment I copied over from another thread:
IQ means intelligence quotient. A bunch of people take a test and they’re compared to each other. Your result is your intelligence quotient.
Its origins were noble, because it was designed to identify students who needed extra help in school. The creator of the test knew that people could change their results with good instruction.
However, that noble origin story was besmirched by what happened later. Eventually, IQ tests were used as a way to classify people in more brutal and rigid ways. The USA military used it as a cutoff for aspiring cadets. USA colleges use tests that effectively are IQ tests to let people in or not. The worst part is that bigots around the world injected pseudoscience into IQ and used it to decide who they think are worthy of life and who aren’t. It’s as awful as it sounds.
You may notice that helping struggling students sounds wonderful, and you may think that we should go back to that.
However, some people are deeply marked by the dark history of IQ. They have developed beliefs that protect them from the dangers of bigotry and IQ reductionism. They believe that tests aren’t useful at all to tell us something about anything. They believe IQ tests should be banished and never used.
Other people believe IQ tests are a snapshot of how a person answered the questions to a test in a given day. Take the same test days, months, or years after a great education, and the result will be higher. Additionally, these people notice that, in research, IQ scores are robustly associated with other things, such as quality of relationships, happiness, income, and other measures. They contend that learning about the world, about ourselves, and how to think critically and solve problems has massive domino effects in peoples’ lives. Once again, these people believe that a test result one day doesn’t doom you for life and doesn’t define you. A bad test result shows the gap that a good education would fill. These people know that a good education makes the mind curious, nimble, and open.
Intelligence quotient. A bunch of people take a test and they’re compared to each other. Your result is your intelligence quotient.
Its origins were noble, because it was designed to identify students who needed extra help in school. The creator of the test knew that people could change their results with good instruction. However, that noble origin story was besmirched by what happened later. Eventually, IQ tests were used as a way to classify people in more brutal and rigid ways. The USA military used it as a cutoff for aspiring cadets. USA colleges use tests that effectively are IQ tests to let people in or not. The worst part is that bigots around the world injected pseudoscience into IQ and used it to decide who they think are worthy of life and who aren’t. It’s as awful as it sounds.
You may notice that helping struggling students sounds wonderful, and you may think that we should go back to that.
However, some people believe that tests aren’t useful at all to tell us something about anything. They believe IQ tests should be banished and never used.
Others people believe IQ tests are a snapshot of how a person answered the questions to a test in a given day. Additionally, these people notice that, in research, IQ scores are robustly associated with other things, such as quality of relationships, happiness, income, and other measures. These results suggest that learning to solve problems helps humans solve problems!
If the noble origins of the test are a guide, poor performers would receive help. More people would get the benefits of a higher IQ, not because of the fear of being classified in a brutal and rigid way, but because a good education makes the mind curious, nimble, and open.
How to learn better? How to organize teams better? How to write text or make presentations so that it aligns with how the brain best receives information? How to evaluate candidates for a role while minimizing the halo effect and the bandwagon effect? How to nudge people into leaving public spaces cleaner? How to make spaces more attractive for people to spend time in? How to increase adherence to lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise after cancer treatment? How to increase the odds of achieving a task you want to do? How to make computer interfaces easier to use for people, including people with disabilities? You’re saying that psychology has not studied these nor contributed to them?
Yes, there are a lot of problems in the field. But there are also brilliant people cutting through the bullshit and using their findings to improve the world. I’d be more than happy to show you robust findings that the field has gifted the world.
It sounds as if you’re saying Harvard only produces capitalist apologists. If so, do you know Stephen Marglin? Richard Levins? Paul Farmer? Michael Herzfeld? Terry Eagleton?
Regardless, it’s tempting to dismiss elite academic institutions. They have time and again served the interests of elites. However, they have also been the place where radical and critical thought has burgeoned. Academia holds in its hands the tools to build our prison as well as tools that we can choose to use to escape from that prison.
Which is why philosophers of science like Lee McIntyre do not use the scientific method as their basis for defining science. Instead, there’s a way to flip the strategy on its head: define science not by its method but by its attitude. Funnily enough, the attitude is precisely what the comment says: embrace empiricism; assume reality is real and that we can understand it.
It sounds like you think Lemmy is unusual in that sense. In reality, absolutely any moderation is political. Politics deals with the distribution of political goods, goods such as attention, relevance, access to distribution channels, discourses, approval… I know I probably sound reductive, but I'm simply being systematic and consistent in using words' meanings.
A like button distributes a political good. A chronological algorithm for a social media site distributes a political good. Saying the OP belongs to this community distributes a political good. So does saying that it doesn't.
We have different thoughts and memories with different animals. We end up with them in different ways. Sometimes we hear what people say and they can become our own thoughts. Sometimes we sit and think new thoughts. Other times we live life and it becomes our own emotions.
Sometimes the memories take charge of the ship and we’re in for the ride. Sometimes our thoughts take charge of the ship and we’re in for the ride.
Sometimes this happens without us noticing. Our memories and thoughts assemble underground and are steering the ship without us fully understanding why the ship is going in the wrong direction. When this happens, we haven’t explored and brought into consciousness our thoughts and emotions.
We can bring those thoughts and emotions to consciousness. Mindfulness can help us observe, accept, and choose, regardless of what our emotions or thoughts say or do. Certain therapies, like Coherence Therapy, emphasize digging our thoughts and emotions so that we can transform them. Other therapies like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy seek to continuously build our capacity to observe, accept, and choose.
If I had to choose one book to recommend, maybe check out How Emotions are Made, by Lisa Feldman Barret. Read it and you’ll have clear answers to your questions and more.
“Deep” or “profound” means nothing in research design. If you read it somewhere, see if it defined precisely in this context. If not, see if you can mentally replace it with a more precise word. If not, be skeptical of the validity of the claims.
My Research Design professor
I’m being a bit cheeky but this has actually stuck with me over the years and I do think it’s helpful.
Same here. That’s why if I’m eating alone I actually clean everything before eating (except for the plate or plates I’m eating from and the cutlery I’m using).
Genuine curiosity: I’ve seen piles of "my superior intellect" and "normies would never understand", so I wanted to ask if your answer was sarcastic. If it isn’t, are you saying that you identify with Rick? Or something different?