Personally I don’t think intelligence is the solution, it would justake conflict more complex and thought out. You would need more empathy for a better world.
Probably not. Conflict doesn’t arise because people don’t have the right ideas, more so conflict is the result of material conditions and processes. The battle for resources, the right to surplus extraction, class struggle, imperialism, all of these result from the evolution of class society, and not because of intelligence.
No, but if empathy went up 50% and greed went down 50%, there would.
This is not about intelligence at all. School tells you that intelligence is important because it makes you a better worker for the corporations.
But if you think about a good person in life, their intelligence is not going to be top of the list of their best qualities.
People are so focused on intelligence that they often completely forget about other qualities a human being can have.
What does it even mean for one person to be 50% more intelligent than another person?
Surely that’s just meant as a general concept and we don’t need to split hairs on the definition of that? Imagine an IQ test or whatever else people normally understand when using the word intelligence, and that such a person would get 1.5 times as many questions right
There’s all kinds of intelligence. If specifically emotional intelligence went up we’d be better off. If it’s the kind that makes you good at day trading or computer science we’ll just end up with more tech bros trying to decide who deserves to live or die.
No chance. Have you seen what grad students and research professors are like at top universities? Especially during grant proposals? Competitive doesn’t begin to describe it. Cutthroat barely does.
Would they use violence though? We might still be better off with the paper conflicts that these people have with each other 🤔
Would they resort to violent conflict though? The question was violence, not competition at others’ cost
I don’t see why that would help. But if everyone’s empathy increased by 50% of the average amount of empathy, that might help. (Not that it is measurable, but this is obviously fantasy)
No, there would be less conflict in the world if we were to cure people from psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissism, racism and other ails that lead to destructive selfishness.
Realistically, the world is too complex and too large to even remotely be able to predict the outcome of making everyone 50% smarter.
My best guess though is that it wouldn’t change much. If everyone is smarter, no one is smarter. High intelligence doesn’t automatically mean Mr. Spock. I used to be involved with Mensa and many of the people I met were nuts, lacked critical thinking skills, or were so full of themselves for testing well they were blind to external information. I myself am highly intelligent on paper, but if you looked at my life you would see a lifelong series of dumb choices and in many cases choosing the worst possible option even knowing it was.
What I mean is being smart isn’t as valuable a skill to have as one might think. Especially at the top end of intelligence, smarter basically equates to faster at solving problems. Raw processing power does play into it for sure but the difference between someone with an IQ of 130 and an IQ of 160 is how fast they finished the test.
The best way to make the world a better place would be to teach everyone critical thinking and emotional intelligence skills.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
As an estimate, how many problems in your life do you think can be attributed to people thinking the wrong thing or being confidentially incorrect in general?
I agree with emotional intelligence being important, I think IQ and EQ should be consolidated as one because recognizing patterns in behaviour on paper isn’t that much different than recognizing patterns in shapes/numbers
I’d say less than 10%? The vast majority of my problems result from my own irrational actions and poor choices. I’ve had problematic idiots in professional and social settings but again the main issue in those cases are largely because I cannot stand willfully ignorant people. If I were more chill about morons, it’d be 0%. But that’s just me personally and I’m usually an outlier.
This is kind of a hot take, but I don’t think we should try to measure and assess IQ and EQ at all. The IQ test in use today tests very specific, very narrow types of intelligence and is not a meaningful measure. In a practical sense intelligence is mostly a matter of speed. Someone with a low or average IQ can solve any problem a high IQ person could, it would just take longer. At every step of thier journey a low IQ person spends more time. Learning the requisite knowledge, understanding the concepts, breaking down the problem, and crafting a solution. Most folks in that situation opt not to continue at some point along the way, but they would eventually get there with enough time and knowledge.
With EQ that’s learned behavior. Some people have a natural knack for it, but outside some types of mental illness, emotional intelligence can be taught.
There are people that only think about making things better for themselves no matter how it effects others. These people would just use that “extra” intelligence to up their game. So no, I don’t think there would be less conflict.
I think part of the reason some of those people live that way is because they don’t think through the effects of everyone else living their lives that way. Perhaps the stat boost to INT would give them the ability to follow that course of action to it’s logical conclusion and therefore choose to live differently?
Exactly. If you do nothing about greed and selfishness/narcissism then nothing changes, you just have smarter greedy people. :/
Things like good public education make society more pleasant to live in for everyone including greedy opportunists and their families.
Same with balancing resource extraction against environmental stability.
What billionaires are doing seems totally illogical and self destructive even from a greed perspective.
Even if we assume they’re thinking they can escape on a space ark it makes no sense to want to live in the cold, harsh, hostile environment of a space instead of on the one planet that we can naturally breathe on that also happens to grow delicious things and stuff.
From no perspectives can this be a smart move, I refuse to believe it!
Theoretically, the people opposed to manipulative narcissists also become more intelligent

Ultimately, however, leftism is an intellectual position. It’s typically held by people who are either well-read, or at minimum understanding of the concept of fairness for all people (which requires abstract thinking and a good theory of mind). Very few people believe in leftism due to stupidity. That’s why it’s in Republicans’ best interest to keep people stupid.
Increasing intelligence of the general population would be a basal necessity for changing the economic system.
IQ is not a proxy for education, though. Raising intelligence without changing education wouldn’t accomplish much. People are kept stupid by means of propaganda, regardless of their intellectual ability.
I think as it is now leftism is an intellectual position, but historically I don’t think that’s always been true, when leftist movements saw more broad popular appeal like during labor organizing there were definitely dumb leftists.
The reason it’s in Republicans best interest to keep people stupid is that stupid people are much easier to propagandize to. Analyzing the information you’re receiving helps make you less likely to fall for blatant lies. (Leftists know we need better propaganda, but it’s also deeply cynical to think we need it.)
The reason it’s in
Republicansthe duopoly’s best interest to keep people stupid is that stupid people are much easier to propagandize to.FTFY
If you mean emotional intelligence then yes. Being able to solve puzzles better (standard IQ) doesn’t mean squat to reducing conflict of the puzzles you solve are how to exploit others more
There’s a difference between IQ and EQ.
Absolutely not, some of the smartest people I’ve ever met have zero emotional intelligence. You can be incredibly accomplished academically and still be totally unable to work productively with others. A lot of these people lean towards aspie/AuDHD supremacy as well funnily enough - they think everyone else is just far too irrational to agree with their horrendously undeveloped philosophies.
I think the world would have less conflict if the average “emotional intelligence” went up 50%
Well, if we look around today, some of the best minds in world are busy making people click on ads










