Open thread, May 29 - June 4, 2017

Thomas

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

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1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

4. Unflag the two options "Notify me of new top level comments on this article" and "Make this post available under..." before submitting

Some evidence that seemingly goes again the widely known "Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate" phenomenon:

What is your opinion on this?

My working hypothesis (small certainty, but I have no better explanation at the moment) is that:

smart people are better at cooperation;
but worse at cooperation with normies than with their own kind;
and if they grow up exclusively among normies, their ability to cooperate may be damaged in general.

In other words, the smart people we see in Mensa or various online debates are the smart individuals who were damaged by growing up among normies. The smart people growing up among smart people already have a successful career at university or elsewhere, and don't care that much about places where the former congregate.

the smart people we see in Mensa or various online debates are the smart individuals who were damaged by growing up among normies.

Curious why you posit that

5Lumifer9y

That's a good insight. But I would probably add a caveat that the "smart people" population is quite diverse, in some ways more so than the normies, so "our kind" can cooperate well with others of our kind, but not necessarily with smart people not of our kind.

0ChristianKl9y

Cooperation can get harder when projects get more complex. The coordination skill that you need to succeed with a project like going drinking at a pub together is a lot less like the coordination skill you need to get a project like Dragon Army working.