> But because he has Down syndrome, someone told him he’s different.
Yes, and him being different (in a negative way) is a statement of fact. One shouldn't be going around shouting this into the faces of people with Down's, but we as a society have to stop pretending low IQ is something to be celebrated or disregarded in people.
Low intelligence as an attribute (not the unfortunate person saddled with it) ought to be universally stigmatised and we should be doing our best to eradicate it from the population. That certainly doesn't mean we should go out of our way to disrespect or dehumanise stupid people to their faces, but there has to be some sort of policy nuance in both treating them with respect while also calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that certain traits and conditions would be better off not existing in the population.
I don't know why people don't understand this, but something being true doesn't mean it can't also be hurtful, and it doesn't mean it has to be said. Gabe clearly already knows that he is different; there's absolutely no point in telling him this, other than to hurt him.
I look at it through my parenting lens. You can’t just ignore it. You have to prepare them for a harsh world where they will constantly hear it, feel it, and possibly worse. I’d feel my role would be to fully acknowledge it, overly embrace it, almost to a theatrical level. This would be privately in the home and while they’re young but the idea is to make them understand their difference has lots of benefits/positives to it. It’s kind of a super power. So they have a positive self image and relationship with their difference before they have to deal with the external stuff. Then, of course, they’ll still get upset when a name caller or bully confronts them but you can lean on the foundation of this is just who you are and who you are is awesome. It still hurts ofc but that’s inevitable in this world, how you respond is controllable. Someone simply vocalizing a fact shouldn’t ruin their day if they’ve been properly “coached” to have the fortitude.
I agree with your comment in general, except this one point: you sometimes absolutely can just ignore it. The instance from the article is one such example.
I didn't read it that way. The subject seems to feel overwhelming grief/dispare for being different and notices it everywhere he goes. What good is there in ignoring it? I'd address it. Own it. It seems that the subject generally has had a supportive family/community and has not had much adversity other than just feeling stuck in his life.
That was a singular event in the article. The article goes on to say how he sees and feels his difference everywhere. He notices in most places, everyone else is the same and he is different. I did not make the interpretation that he only notices this because once someone told him he was different. I interpret that he would have noticed this whether someone said it or not. This is why I personally would address it versus pretend it doesn't exist. From a young age, I would have presumed there is no scenario where he could live a life ignorant of his difference.
To be clear, I'm saying it can't be ignored as a parent. Gabe can ignore it, but that usually requires some proper preparation and understanding of how to deal with the emotions it may generate when someone says it. Hence the parenting part.
> Gabe clearly already knows that he is different; there's absolutely no point in telling him this, other than to hurt him.
That’s from top of thread, and what I’m disagreeing with. My stance is he should be told so he can understand, process, ask questions, be supported, in a safe positive environment.
Never discussing it is the same as ignoring it and he will notice or be told by someone. It might just be some innocent 3 year old on a playground, but he will be told. But you’re letting him deal with that in the moment unprepared if you don’t proactively address it as a parent. All kinds of bad could come from that.
It’s where I entered. The parent of that is more in tuned with my opinion of addressing it in a positive manner. You introduced the idea of concealing it/never mentioning it on that comment, there’s nothing new you’re saying here and based on other posts you’re just argumentative with everything so I’m done here.
There's a gulf of difference between burying/hiding truth and going out of your way to unnecessarily bring up a fact that serves no good purpose in context.
All of which to say, you can affirm it by being a dick, but that's not the only way to acknowledge the truth. Nor should we pretend the facts aren't there.
We are all different, and have different challenges in life to overcome. That’s life, as they say. You, for instance, have your prejudges to struggle with.
The question is how we all deal with these challenges, and how we meet people who are different from ourselves. I think it is important that we don’t put each other down, or judge based on our assumptions of what a person’s differences entails. Meeting people as individuals, and imagine other people complexly. And cheering on each other as we each overcome our challenges.
“We’re different, we’re the same” is a sesame street illustrated book that would clear things up quickly. Helped us explain the concept to our then 3 year old. Reinforcing the idea of celebrating the differences, we all have them, and not judging anyone else for theirs.
Every person has differences from every other people. Including monozygotic twins. Clearly what’s being referred to here is using “different” dismissively.
@avazhi Intelligence is a highly multidimensional thing. IQ as a general measure of intelligence is an antiquated concept. As such, eradicating "low intelligence" as you put it here is ill specified - what type of low intelligence? In what context?
More importantly, as AI models improve I think you will run into personal trouble by attaching your self-worth to your intelligence. For all of us "smart people", this aspect of our being will become increasingly insignificant.
But setting all this aside, ranking people based on any measure is a sure way to end up lonely and miserable. Giving love and respect to people based on their rank is a silly concept in my mind and I doubt you think this either.
Are you sure? It always seemed pretty reductive to me to try and take something as complicated as intelligence and reduce it down to a single-dimensional number. Most people consider me "smart", but that's only because I'm pretty good at math. I'm pretty much an idiot at anything else. Even the SAT breaks things down into different categories.
Also, given the fact that you can study for IQ tests, I don't really think I agree at all that it's some immutable and objective fact of behavioral science.
Sure, but If you can improve your IQ by studying, that suggests that this number isn't some hyper-objective thing we should treat as immutable or that it's even a true reflection of the person's total cognitive abilities.
I'm not saying that IQ is useless or anything, just that we should take the results with an appropriately large grain of salt.
You can improve your score by getting better at the tests and improving exam technique and maybe go from (picking numbers out of my arse) 115 to 120. You can't go from 90 to 120.
Depending on whether we're talking about studying-for-the-test or studying (education) generally:
> Studying and formal education can improve an IQ score by 1 to 5 points per additional year of schooling, while direct practice and familiarity with test formats can bump scores temporarily by 5 to 15 points.
If you include education generally, this gives a swing of up to 80 points between someone who goes to school K-12 and then studies for the IQ test, vs. someone who doesn't do any of that.
Given that 80 points is many standard deviations on the IQ scale, it kind of seems like it's mostly measuring education/studying rather than something innate like "intelligence".
Replace the word "study" with the word "cheat" and it makes more sense. You aren't SUPPOSED to study for an IQ test.
What you are seeing is that if you cheat it helps a little bit. That's not an argument for OR against them in general, except maybe to say that they should be more resistant to this type of cheating.
Even if you're not explicitly "cheating", if your job is more primed around pattern recognition and the like, you might still perform better on an IQ test than someone who works driving trucks. This doesn't imply that the truck driver is inherently more stupid than the person who reads patterns all day.
About half of general intelligence is this correlation between all the different types. Modern IQ tests measure something like 15 types, and pattern recognition is one of them. It's the correlation between all the types that really matters.
It is strongly linked to career success, educational attainment, and many other things in life that are typically regarded as positive outcomes. Lower g-factors correlate strongly with poor outcomes.
Regardless of what we're measuring (and if it can be improved with various interventions) it is something we can measure, seems to be heritable, and is strongly correlated with positive outcomes.
The GP's phrasing was harsh, but he's not wrong for insisting that good and bad are not the same thing.
Below average intelligence is something that should be fixed, not celebrated, and it's not just some cute and quirky Sesame Street "We're all different, but the same" thing. It's a disorder, like Depression or Schizophrenia. It should be treated, and ideally eradicated. People who have it should not be stigmatized for it, but they SHOULD be treated and at least taught coping skills - as they would be with any other disability.
Nobody denies that psychometric 'g' exists, but there is contention about what it means. There's more than one theory here among psychometricians, including mutualism, or even (as Cosma Shalizi writes) that g is just a statistical artifact (he shows persuasively that any battery of tests you construct with the same structure as IQ tests are going to have some kind of g factor, even if the tests themselves are meaningless).
This kind of feels uncomfortably close to eugenics talking points. I'm not saying that you're suggesting we do eugenics, because I don't think that's what you're trying to say, but trying to "eradicate low intelligence from the population" feels pretty similar to the "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" point from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Ultimately, I think there are more aspects of "value" than "being smart".
Yes, and him being different (in a negative way) is a statement of fact. One shouldn't be going around shouting this into the faces of people with Down's, but we as a society have to stop pretending low IQ is something to be celebrated or disregarded in people.
Low intelligence as an attribute (not the unfortunate person saddled with it) ought to be universally stigmatised and we should be doing our best to eradicate it from the population. That certainly doesn't mean we should go out of our way to disrespect or dehumanise stupid people to their faces, but there has to be some sort of policy nuance in both treating them with respect while also calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that certain traits and conditions would be better off not existing in the population.