waveman comments on Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 December 2007 10:14PM

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Comment author: michael_vassar3 12 December 2007 11:50:17PM 12 points [-]

If the same majority of smart people as stupid people are conservative then the statement that "Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." is actually completely irrelevant, but I don't think that anyone believes otherwise. If there is a positive correlation between intelligence and the truth of one's beliefs (a claim the truth of which is probably assumed by most people to be true for any definition of intelligence they care about) then the average intelligence of people who hold a given belief is entangled with the truth of that belief and can be used as Bayesian evidence. Evidence is not proof of course, and this heuristic will not be perfectly reliable.

Comment author: pnrjulius 05 July 2012 04:17:50AM 2 points [-]

The statistical evidence is that liberalism, especially social liberalism, is positively correlated with intelligence. This does not prove that liberalism is correct; but it does provide some mild evidence in that direction.

Comment author: waveman 05 August 2016 01:00:08AM *  0 points [-]

it does provide some mild evidence in that direction.

It would provide significantly useful evidence, if we had no other information to determine the truth of the tenets of conservatism. Given that we do, and that the 'evidence' provided by who believes liberalism vs conservatism is not strong, I suggest it is better to ignore it.

Why? Because using these sorts of arguments are very dangerous because they so readily degenerate into overvaluing social proof.